The Writing in the Sand
by HollyandHawthorn
Summary: All that Harry wants is to be just like all the other kids, but when another boy comes along that's just like Harry, a friendship blossoms that opens the doors wide to the wizarding world he belongs to.
1. Friends

_I don't know where this story is going to go, but I guess that's what makes it all the more magical, never really knowing what's to come. _

_DISCLAIMER: I don't own Harry Potter, of course, that belongs to the beautiful JK Rowling._

_Reviews are golden, for this to get better, I need the feedback._

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><p>Harry Potter didn't know why everyone treated him differently; he was just like all of the other children. Well, maybe he was a little bit smaller than all the other kids, and his clothes didn't fit, but otherwise, he was just the same as everybody else.<p>

All he had ever wanted was to fit in. His cousin Dudley fit in just fine with everybody in his class, all the children wanted to play with Dudley, because they all thought Dudley was 'cool.' Harry didn't know what that was supposed to mean, but he did know whatever it was couldn't be very pleasant. Dudley was a horrible child, and Harry was his punching bag, and if using people as punching bags was cool, then Harry definitely didn't want to be cool.

He hadn't been at school very long, only a few weeks in fact, but all the other students seemed to think he was weird. Nobody ever talked to him at lunchtime, and nobody would ever invite him to join in on their games, so he would go sit on the playground by himself and draw pictures in the sand with his fingers.

Harry loved drawing pictures in the sand more than anything else when he was at school.

He would draw people, dressed up in pretty dresses and fancy bowties, with big smiles on their faces. Often he would name the sand people, and make up stories with them. His favourite sand person was Lily, she was a pretty redheaded girl in a pink polka dotted dress. Lily loved to pick flowers, and give them to all her sand friends.

It always made Harry smile when Lily was around to pick flowers in the sand. Sometimes, when he thought really hard, he could hear her voice, it was a very sweet voice, and oddly familiar at the same time. But some days Lily wasn't there, so he would just play with his other sand-friends until she came.

Harry hated having to leave his sand friends behind for the real world, his classes were not very much fun. Every time the class split into pairs to practice reading together, Harry was always somehow left without a partner. It made his heart sad that nobody wanted to be his friend in the real world, because he was just like everybody else. At least he thought he was.

Being at home was just as awful as being at school. Harry always had to make sure he was out of sight when Dudley got bored of his new toys, because Dudley's favourite thing to do when he was bored as to chase Harry around the house until he either cornered him and beat him up, or got tired. Harry was glad he was a good runner, and a good hider, because Dudley was not a very good chaser.

One day, Harry was sitting in the sand, finger moving rapidly through the grains, carving out his friends, when somebody stepped right on top of his drawings. Harry stared at the sneakers for a moment, and he felt his tummy turn over. Those were Dudley's shoes.

He looked up at his cousin, he never thought Dudley had a very nice face; he looked a little bit like the pigs in the farm books Harry read on his own in class. Now Dudley's face was screwed up in a funny kind of smile that only meant one thing to Harry, Dudley was bored.

"Where are all your friends?" Dudley sneered "Don't you have any friends?"

All the other kids laughed from behind Dudley, why were they doing that? Harry had never done anything wrong? Why would they laugh at him?

All those questions got pushed away very quickly when his cousin made a clumsy swipe towards Harry, and in an instant, he was running as fast as his little legs would take him, shirt flapping in the wind and hair flying off of his forehead so that the thin lightning bolt scar shone in the bright sunlight. He didn't stop running for a very long time, he ran across the grass and through the school, he ran to his classroom, grabbed his too-big schoolbag, tossing it over his shoulders and ran all the way home.

It wasn't until he actually stopped running out the front of number four, Privet Drive, that he realised he couldn't actually go inside. Aunt Petunia would probably put him in his cupboard for a week for skipping school. He really didn't like his cupboard; it was so very small, even for a six year old, he couldn't fit very much in there, not that he had very much to put in his cupboard anyway.

He hoisted his backpack a little higher on his shoulders and looked around the street for a long moment.

There was a park just on the other side of Magnolia Crescent, he remembered walking there when Dudley had wanted to test out his new bike, it had fancy training wheels and everything. Harry had been incredibly jealous of his cousin that day. He looked back at the house, considering his fate for a second longer, before tottering off in the direction of the park.

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><p>It was quite a sight to be seen, the scrawny six year old with terribly messy hair walking down the street with such determination. If Aunt Petunia knew that he was walking through the neighbourhood looking like this, she would probably have a heart attack. Harry had always hated her persistence in trying to flatten his unruly shock of hair, honestly he thought it was a bit silly, if it didn't work the first time, why would it possibly work any of the other times?<p>

Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon were just like all the children at his school. He didn't know why they treated him differently, he was just the same as every other kid his age, but Dudley got all the toys, and Harry got the disapproving looks. It made him sad that even his family thought he was weird. That didn't seem right to him, a family should love you no matter what, even he knew that much.

When Harry finally found the park, he smiled so big his cheeks ached. There was a sandpit at this park, which meant he could play with his friends again. The friends that didn't think he was weird and always smiled back at him.

He walked very quickly to the sandpit, plopping himself down in the middle and placing his big schoolbag next to him. The sand was warm to the touch, kind of like what a hug would feel like, and Harry really liked that feeling.

He set to work immediately, smoothing the sand with his tiny hands in front of him, before carving his little friends out of the grain. Lily was going to be here today, she just had to, he hadn't seen her in three whole days and he missed her a lot. But when the first smiling face looked up at him, it was Lily, it was James, the boy that Harry thought looked very much like him. He had black hair that didn't sit flat too, and it made Harry giggle to look at him.

James was one of the bravest sand people, he would always do silly things that could get him hurt, but he was always triumphant at the end, and had lots of friends because of it. Maybe that was all Harry had to do to get friends too, maybe he just had to be _brave_ and people would finally want to be his friend at school.

A tiny glimmer of hope ignited in the little boy's tummy.

All he wanted was to have a real friend, just one, but it seemed like Dudley had stolen all the other kids away, and there was no way that Harry was going to try and steal friends from Dudley. He remembered the time he had taken his cousins toy truck outside to play while the rest of the family crowded around the television with the fans blasting. It was a very hot day, so hot that Harry's feet stung when he walked across the small section of paving in the back garden and onto the grass.

Dudley hadn't realised one of his hundreds of toys was missing until he spotted Harry in the garden on his trip to the refrigerator. Oh boy he had screamed a lot, bawling his beady little eyes out and rolling around on the ground, he really did look more and more like a pig as each day crept by. Uncle Vernon had stormed out the back door, grabbed a tiny Harry by the scruff and proceeded to toss him into his cupboard with such force Harry's tiny collection of toy soldiers toppled onto the ground.

If only he wasn't so small, maybe then he could be braver, maybe then he could stand up to his stupid cousin and maybe then Harry could have friends like he wanted. If only he still had his mummy and daddy he wouldn't have to live with Dudley and the Dursleys. He wished he still had his parents so bad it made his chest hurt, sometimes he'd cry when he was locked in his cupboard, he wrap himself in a little ball and wish with all his heart that his mummy and daddy would just come back.

Nobody at number four, privet drive ever talked about Harry's parents, and every time Harry asked question he was put straight back in his cupboard, but that just made him want to ask the questions even more.

Harry had made lots of his sand friends now, all smiling placidly up at him. He wished they could talk to him, then he wouldn't need real friends, he could just talk to the sand.

"Hello."

Harry's eyes grew wide and round, his mouth falling open as he stared down at the sand people. Had one of them really just talked?

"Er... Hello? Are you okay?"

That definitely wasn't the sand, they didn't move, and it sounded like it was coming from behind him. Turning his round eyes over his shoulder cautiously, he gasped in surprise when he saw another boy standing a few feet away.

Harry looked around himself, this boy couldn't possibly be talking to him, nobody ever talked to him. But yet her he was, alone in a sandpit and a boy was _talking to him._ He stood up clumsily, tugging on his too big shirt awkwardly and turned to face the boy behind him.

Harry had never seen anybody quite like this boy, his skin was very pale, so pale that Harry would normally think he was sick, but it looked quite ordinary against the white blonde hair that dangled in his eyes, his big, silver eyes. He looked at them for quite a while, before he realised the boy was staring at him confusedly.

"Are you okay?" The pale boy asked again, snapping Harry out of his reverie.

"Y-yes, I'm okay." Harry continued to gape. "Why aren't you in school?"

"I don't go to school, not until I turn eleven, but that's a long way away yet. What's your name?" The boy cocked his head to the side and smiled at Harry. No, he wasn't smiling at Harry, he was just smiling, nothing to do with Harry, people never smiled at him.

"I'm Harry."

"Harry, huh, that's a nice name" The boys eyes glittered as he spoke, that smile still playing on his lips.

"I guess..." Harry shifted uncomfortably, he wasn't used to people talking to him without trying to beat him up. "What's your name then?"

"My name's Draco, it means Dragon in some other language."

"Wow, that's a really nice name." Harry felt himself smile, this kid wasn't so bad. "Do you want to go play, or something?"

He didn't even know why he asked that question, why would this kid want to play with scrawny little Harry? But to his surprise, Draco's eyes lit up.

"Yeah, okay! Let's go swing!"

This boy was very nice, Harry decided, very nice indeed.


	2. Silence

_I'm quite in love with this story and I've barely even started writing it. Little Harry is just too damn cute. Don't forget to give me reviews, their like presents._

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><p>Draco and Harry sat on the swings, laughing loudly together for very long time. Only when Harry's little legs started to hurt from so much swinging did he stop, dragging his feet through the sand to slow himself down. Harry's cheeks hurt a lot, from all the smiling he had been doing while he was swinging. He waited patiently as Draco touched down next to him.<p>

"That was pretty fun." Draco said, his silver eyes glittering brightly. "We should do that again on another day!" At this he looked over at Harry expectantly, wringing his hands together. Harry considered the idea for a moment, tilting his head heavily to the side in thought.

"Yeah, we should. What about tomorrow?" Harry bit his lip, hope fluttering in his chest like a hundred butterflies. Maybe he was being too fast, maybe Draco didn't want to be Harry's as much as Harry really, really wanted to be his friend. "You don't have to if you don't want to…"

"Of course I want to!" Draco piped instantly. "I'll ask my mummy when I go back home, and you can ask your mummy, okay?"

Harry wanted to tell Draco that he didn't have a mummy, but instead he simply nodded. "Okay."

"I better go home and ask, but she'll say yes, my mummy always says yes." Draco turned to go, but stopped after just a few little steps. He turned around and looked at Harry with a big smile on his face, walking back and holding out his hand.

Harry stared at it, mouth gaping wide. What did he want him to do? Was he going to beat him up? But he had been so nice so far!

"You shake it" Draco giggled softly "My daddy does it when he makes a new friend."

"O-oh, yeah! Right!" Harry quickly took the pale boys tiny hand in his and shook it. He decided that Draco's skin was very soft, and that one day he'd have to find out how he got his hands to be so soft.

"You're my good friend, Harry" Draco beamed at him, before dropping his hand back to his side. "See you tomorrow!"

And with that, the little blonde boy was sprinting across the park and out of Harry's sight. Harry was his good friend! Harry leapt into the air with glee, pumping his fist into the sky and laughing happily. Harry had a friend, a real-life friend!

He stood there alone for a few more minutes, smiling to himself at the though of having his first friend, before he remembered that Dudley would probably be home very very soon. Harry could never be home later than Dudley was, because that was simply too late, and Harry really wanted his dinner tonight.

With that thought a very loud grumble from his tummy, Harry scrambled over to his back pack, hoisted it precariously onto his shoulders before setting off at a run straight home.

Not five minutes later, the scrawny boy with the lopsised glasses was knocking on the door to number four, his trainers filled with sand and a big grin on his face. When Aunt Petunia opened the door to see who was there, she turned her horsey face down to him with a frown, furrowing her skinny eyebrows and narrowing her eyes.

"What are you smiling at, boy?" She said sourly, ushering him inside hastily before the neighbours got too good a look at him. Petunia didn't much like the neighbours snooping in on her business, though she was quite fond of prying into everybody elses lives.

Harry simply walked past her and into his cupboard, dropping his schoolbag onto his bed with a contented sigh. Not even nosey Aunt Petunia could ruin his happiness right now, because he had his first ever friend, and that made him happy enough to even put up with Dudley's bullying.

He closed the door behind him and plopped down onto his bed, no matter how happy he was, he was very tired from all that running he had done, and laughing with Draco had made his tummy muscles sore. Harry kicked off his sandy trainers, he would need new ones soon, his feet were getting just a bit too big for the ones he had. He expected Aunt Petunia would just dig him out another old pair of Dudley's shoes again. She didn't much like spending any money on Harry if she didn't absolutely have to.

Harry flicked his feet up onto his bed, snuggling in against the thin blankets and staring up at the underside of the staircase, watching the little spiders that lived in here spinning little webs of silk above him. Harry always found spiders webs to be very pretty, especially right after the rain, when the droplets sticking to the silk would shine in the sunlight. He was the only one that thought that though. All the Dursleys despised anything that was messy, including Harry's rogue head of hair.

He hadn't been lying down for very long when the distinct sound of Dudley Dursley's heavy footsteps met his ears. Harry listened as Aunt Petunia fussed over her son, asking about his day and telling him to go play upstairs. Harry couldn't ever remember being asked how his day was by anybody. He wondered if his mummy would have asked him how his day was every day? He imagined she would, if she was anything like Lily in the sand, she would ask him lots of questions and play games with him and buy him clothes that fit and brand new shoes.

But that was never ever going to happen, because Harry's parents had died in a car crash, and Harry couldn't get them back now. He brushed his little fingers over the scar on his forehead, that one bit of pinkish skin that raised above the rest. His scar was the one thing Harry actually liked about himself.

Harry curled up into a little ball on top of his blankets, continuing to stare blankly at the spiders for a little while, before he heard Aunt Petunia's shrill voice calling Dudley down for dinner, and then the sharp rapping of boney knuckles against his cupboard door.

"Dinner, out, now!" Harry always noticed the change in the tone of her voice when she talked to him. She didn't seem to like him much at all.

Harry waited for the sound of Dudley's heavy footsteps, watched as dust fell from the underside of the staircase, making the little spiders living there jiggle. When he heard the kitchen door close behind his cousin, he finally left the cupboard, moving cautiously down the hall and into where the Dursley's were already seated around the table.

"Hurry up, boy! We don't have all night!" Uncle Vernon's booming voice had always scared Harry the most, probably because it almost always meant he was in some kind of trouble. He scampered across the room, climbing into the hardest chair at the table and staring down at his tiny serve of food.

He didn't know how he was ever going to get big like the other kids if he didn't eat that much. Dudley always ate lots of food. He started to eat anyway, avoiding eye contact with any of the Dursleys. They didn't much like him staring at them, said it was rude of him. Shoveling the food into his little mouth, Harry had finished eating in record time, looking at his plate quietly. Hopefully that wasn't rude of him.

"Harry left school early today, mummy." Dudley's voice was very obnoxious, meaning only one thing. He really, really wanted to see Harry get in trouble. That was Dudley's next favourite thing to beating Harry up, and no matter how fast Harry could run, he could never escape Uncle Vernon's bellowing voice and fat fingers.

"Oh really, and why would he do that?" Aunt Petunia's voice was calm, but Harry had a feeling she was very annoyed underneath.

"Because he doesn't like any of the other kids I think, so he ran away."

Harry looked up at his cousin, that wasn't true. The other kids didn't like Harry at all, no matter how hard he tried to make friends, they would always laugh at him. He didn't run away because he didn't like any of them, he ran away because all of them didn't like him.

"Now you listen here, boy." Uncle Vernon turned his purple face towards Harry, pointing a fork at him threateningly. "We pay good money for you to go to that school, money, that we could be spending on better things. So you can't just go, gallivanting around the countryside as you please."

Uncle Vernon seemed to like talking about how much money Harry was costing him, money for clothes, for food, for school. Harry didn't know why he complained though, Dudley got lots of things he didn't even need, and all Harry's clothes had come from Dudley anyway.

"...So you better think long and hard, because next time, we'll leave you outside to fend for yourself. Understand?"

"I didn't run away because I don't like people! They don't like me!" Harry's voice was very loud, but he didn't care much, because this wasn't his fault. "They were going to beat me up like they al-"

"DON'T YOU DARE TALK BACK TO ME BO-"

That was strange.

Harry stared at Uncle Vernon, his mouth moving furiously and his face turning a very deep shade of purple, but not a sound came out of his mouth. It was like somebody had hit the mute button. Aunt Petunia gawped at him in horror, turning her wide eyes to Harry, and then back to her husband.

It didn't make any sense, but something told Harry that the Dursleys would find a way to blame Uncle Vernon's sudden speechlessness on him. So he ran.

He ran out of the kitchen, skidding into the corridor and ripping his cupboard door open. He clambered inside quickly, slamming his door shut and flicking the flimsy little lock into the latch. He curled in on himself, big green eyes watching the tiny grate that was his only view of the house outside.

Everything was very quiet, he heard Aunt Petunia squeaking words to the mute Uncle Vernon. Harry couldn't even imagine how angry he was going to be when he got his voice back. He would probably string Harry up by the ankles out one of the windows upstairs he'd be so angry. He watched that grate for a very long time, watched as three figures rushed past him and out the front door, listened to the revving a car engine, and then everything was quiet and still.

Harry rolled over to face his wall, taking his glasses off and resting them on his little bedside table. He snuggled into his blankets, and started to think.

Had he really just made Uncle Vernon stop talking? That wasn't even possible, was it? Sure, all he wanted was for Uncle Vernon to be quiet. But wishing couldn't just make him be quiet, that kind of stuff just didn't happen...

It was kind of like magic.

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><p>When Harry woke up the next morning, he got dressed extra quietly, packing his bag and combing his fingers through his messy hair a few times, before sneaking out into the hallway, unlocking the front door, and running out of the house before anybody would have a chance to even comprehend what had happened.<p>

Today was going to be his day, and he wasn't going to let anybody muck it up. Not Uncle Vernon (Who had come back late in the night with his booming voice very much intact), not Dudley, and not any of his classmates. Because today was different to all the other days. Today, Harry had a friend.

He tottered off to school with a big grin on his face, his shirt hanging loosely from his shoulders and the straps of his backpack fisted tightly in his hands. He walked along the footpath, listening to the gentle thud of his footsteps, and squinting into the morning sunlight while his mind wondered back to the events of the night before.

He never did figure out how Uncle Vernon's voice had just vanished, and from what he overheard, the doctors at the hospital hadn't been able to figure it out either. His voice had returned as quickly as it went, without any explanation at all.

He pushed the thought to the back of his head, Uncle Vernon's face wasn't going to dampen his mood today. He was so very excited to see his new friend, so excited in fact, that he wasn't even at all worried about what Dudley was going to do to him at school today.

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><p>Lily was here today, her gentle eyes beaming up at Harry from the sand, a bunch of flowers clutched in her little hands. Harry didn't realise just how much he had missed her until he saw her smiling face being drawn out in front of him. James was here too today, he was being rather silly, doing lots of tricks that could get him hurt.<p>

Harry wondered why he was doing that, it was rather odd, even for somebody as brave as James.

He watched them for a little while, drawing in other friends for them to play with, but James seemed very determined that he wanted to play with Lily. It made Harry giggle as he watched the two of them, Lily seemed just as determined to ignore James completely.

Harry didn't notice Dudley glaring at him from a distance, all his friends crowded around him, laughing at his jokes that weren't even funny. He didn't notice Dudley turning away from him, for the first time ever, thinking better of trying to beat up his scrawny little cousin.

When the schoolbell rang out through the playground, Harry looked away from his friends, and up towards the sad looking classrooms. He sighed heavily, looking back down to where James had finally given up on trying to impress Lily, instead choosing to laugh with another messy haired sand-person. Harry didn't know who he was, but he was sure he'd find out soon enough.

He jumped up to his feet, bidding his sand-friends goodbye and walking slowly off toward his class.

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><p>The rest of school went by very quickly for Harry, so that before he knew it he was pounding the pavement all the way home, scampering straight past number four, Privet Drive, and on towards the park where he hoped his friend was waiting.<p>

He walked so fast his little legs started to hurt, schoolbag swaying with every step he took, closer and closer to his friend. Please let Draco be there. Please oh please oh please.

The sight of white blonde hair made Harry's heart swell in his chest, and he started running. He dropped his bag onto the grass, leaping towards the blonde boy standing in the middle of the park.

"Draco! You came!"

"Of course I came, silly!" Draco laughed happily, his silver eyes running over Harry before holding out his hand.

This time Harry knew what he had to do with that hand, taking it in his tightly and shaking it enthusiastically. Only friends got to shake hands.

"So your mummy doesn't mind you coming to the park?" Harry tilted his head to one side, grinning widely at Draco.

"I told you she always says yes," Draco smiled back at him, though it looked a little bit strained, like Draco didn't really want to talk about it. Harry didn't know why, though.

"Well that's good." He looked over towards the playground before glancing back at Draco. "Want to go play in the sandpit?"

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><p>Harry flattened out the sand with his palms, sitting cross-legged in the centre, his canvas spread before him. A few feet away, a little blonde boy watched him work with a wondrous expression plastered on his pointed face. Harry didn't know why he looked so thrilled by Harry's work, it was almost like he had never seen somebody playing in the sand before.<p>

Harry ignored it, maybe Draco just liked watching Harry draw out his other friends. His fingers glided through the sand easily, his friends appearing before his eyes within minutes. Harry really wanted to introduce his sand friends to Draco, after all, they were the most important people in his whole world. He saw James first, his big smile glowing out from the sand, then his messy haired friend, and then Lily.

"Those are some real neat people," came Draco's voice from beside him. Harry looked up from the sand, to find Draco kneeling next to him, looking down at his friends, his eyes filled with something Harry didn't quite recognise. It was something like, longing.

Harry turned back to his sand friends, where James seemed to have taken to trying to impress Lily again.

"How do you make them move like that?"

Wait, what? Harry had never had anybody notice that before, he had always thought it was just a part of his imagination. He looked down at them, finally seeing the grains of sand shift as James danced around Lily. Did that happen for all kids? He was pretty sure this was not normal at all.

"I..." Harry gaped down at the sand, how had he not noticed before? They had been his friends for so long, and he hadn't even seen what was right in front of him.

"Well, however you do it, it's really nice. I'm no good at making things move yet, but I'm sure I'll get good at it once I start school." Draco sat up straighter at this, a proud grin on his face.

This was very confusing for Harry, he cocked his head to the side, knitting his little eyebrows together, thinking hard. How could any of this happen? Uncle Vernon's voice mysteriously disappears, Harry's sand friends moving all by themselves... And Draco seemed so calm about it all, like it was normal, or something.

The boys sat in the sand for just over an hour, Harry drawing more and more of his friends, watching them all moving about in their little sand-world. Draco simply watched, he asked Harry lots of questions about school, and told Harry about how his parents were very important, and were out of the house a lot, at meetings and stuff.

Soon enough it was time for Harry to leave the park. He stood up, helping Draco to his feet as well. The pair walked over to where Harry had dropped his bag earlier. He hoisted it back onto his shoulders, before turning to look at Draco again.

"You're my real good friend, Draco." Harry smiled at him, pushing his glasses up his nose.

"You're my real good friend too, Harry."

Harry was the first one to offer his hand this time, and Draco took it almost instantly, squeezing it tight and shaking it gently.

"Ask your mummy to come back tomorrow, after school?"

Harry's heart went a bit tight, he really wanted to tell him about his mummy, but again, he kept his mouth tightly shut, smiling at his friend. "Yeah, see you then!"

And with that, the boys parted ways, and the magic in the air left the park.


	3. Haircut

_I had major writers block, so sorry it took me such a long time. Please review and let me know how I'm going with the little ones._

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><p><strong>Haircut.<strong>

Today was a Monday, and to little Harry that only ever meant one thing in particular.

"That bloody boy needs a haircut, again!" Vernon's voice was loud and obnoxious, as though he were inviting the entire street to listen in on this rather predictable conversation. Harry's hair had always grown strangely fast, but it had never much bothered him, his Aunt and Uncle, however, seemed to despise his messy mop, and insisted on taking him to the barber on a weekly basis to have it all hacked off. He didn't understand why they would bother wasting their time, it always looked exactly the same - everywhere.

This particular morning, Harry didn't even lift his eyes to stare at his Uncle, but continued to saw away at the scrappy bit of toast that had been tossed onto his plate. He didn't bother to look at Dudley's plate, already knowing that it would be filled with far more tasty things than a piece of burnt toast. Dudley was always much more well fed than Harry, but he didn't much mind, because the more Dudley ate, the slower he got.

"I'll take him after school, then. The barber must be making a fortune off of him, wish he would just cut a decent amount off for once." Aunt Petunia huffed to herself, clattering around the kitchen as she obsessively worked to scrub down the cook top before anything burnt onto her precious stainless steel. Harry had to swallow a snort, knowing all too well that the barber had always taken huge amounts of hair off of his head, though it never had worked once.

He finished his toast quickly, before jumping down from his chair and washing his plate. He was out the front door before Uncle Vernon had a chance to put down his morning newspaper.

Harry had met his friend Draco exactly two months ago today, he knew because they had sat down a few days ago and worked it all out on a calendar Draco had brought with him from home. He had given it to Harry, calling it their friendship calendar, and told him to hang it next to his bed so they could both remember just how long they had been friends for. Harry promised that he would never miss marking off a single day on that calendar.

As he walked to school today, his backpack high on his shoulders and his t-shirt hanging to his knees, Harry thought about how much he really liked Draco. They had been friends for a very long time now, and Harry was sure they were going to be friends for a long time more, because there was something very special about them both.

Neither of them really put much thought to it, in fact, Draco seemed to think that they were both perfectly ordinary, and didn't seem to have thought about it at all. But Harry did, sometimes. Mostly when he was reading to himself in the classroom, or when he was locked in his cupboard for doing his homework too quickly.

They were different.

As he walked through the school gates, he kept his little head down, avoiding making eye contact with any of the other children, because they had made a habit of being very nasty to Harry now. Only last week, one of Dudley's more select gang members had thrown Harry's glasses into the toilet, laughing hysterically along with all the other kids when he emerged with the frames dripping wet.

They had made him a nickname now, one that Harry didn't much like.

"Morning Pottyface!" yelled one of his classmates from across the playground, causing everyone around them to burst into fits of giggles. Harry felt his face glow, and walked much faster towards the confines of his classroom. All that he wanted was to have friends that didn't call him nasty names or stand on his sand friends at lunch time.

He wished Draco would come to school with him, then they could both play together all the time. They would read to each other in class and colour in pictures of dragons. Draco liked to talk about dragons, he had a very good imagination.

Once, the two of them had sat across from each other in the sand as Harry's sand friends danced around him, and had talked about dragons for a very long time. Harry would watch Draco in awe, gasping when he was told stories about Dragons attacking villages in the old days. Harry would ask him all kinds of questions, like "Are there dragons in Britain?" and "What does that one look like?" listening intently as Draco answered him.

Harry wished he could imagine as well as Draco could, because if he could make up Welsh Greens and Hungarian Horntails, he was certain he would never get tired of being locked away in his cupboard for days, ever again.

His morning class took forever, and even his hardest attempts to concentrate on the maths in front of him were always interrupted by someone whispering something nasty about him to their friends. He wished he had a dragon right now, then everybody would have to be nice to him.

The lunch bell clanged, and he quickly stowed his maths book away before scampering out of the classroom behind the other children. He headed to the sandpit, where he knew he could find his friends waiting for him. Everybody seemed to avoid the sandpit now, so Harry had quite a bit of it to himself. He plopped himself down into the whiteness, smoothing his canvas and drawing out his friends, just as he had every single day that he had been at this school.

Lily and James were both there today, and though a very long time had passed, Lily was still very stubbornly ignoring the dark haired boys antics. It didn't surprise Harry much, because Lily had always been very sweet and quiet, picking flowers for all her friends. James, however, was very outgoing and acted very odd when he wanted to impress someone. It still made Harry laugh to see how different the two of them were, but he did like them that way, so different from each other that their friendship was extra special compared to everybody else.

Harry ignored all the other children when they yelled his nickname at him, keeping his head bowed to the sand, watching his friends move about before him. That dark haired boy was there again today, Harry had decided to name him Sirius. Harry had heard the name once, though he couldn't remember when, tagging it onto the strange boy who happily played along with the strange name.

Lunch ended all too quickly, though Harry was happy that he had made it the entire break without anybody stepping on his friends, or flushing his glasses down the toilet.

He read by himself in the corner of the classroom, sinking away from the other children and into a cosy little corner. He was getting rather good at reading, and now he could finish a whole story in one afternoon (though sometimes he did skip over the harder words). He closed the book just as the teacher announced that it was time for them to go home, all of the other kids leaping for their fancy schoolbags and running through the door, leaving Harry to collect his scruffy one last, pulling it high on his shoulders, and beginning the long trek to the park.

* * *

><p>He arrived just under fifteen minutes later, walking towards the playground on the far side and smiling happily when he spotted the tousled white hair of his very good, special friend. Draco was already sitting on the swingset, kicking his feet into the sand and watching as it sprayed out in front of him. It was only when Harry was a few feet away that he finally noticed him.<p>

"Oh! Hello Harry, sorry, I was watching the sand." He smiled crookedly at him, his silver eyes gleaming at the sight of little Harry. The pair giggled for a moment, before Harry dropped his backpack and wordlessly settled himself onto the swing next to Draco, rocking himself gently, back and forth.

"How are you, today?" Harry asked, watching Draco kick the sand out from under him.

"It was good, me and mummy pruned the roses, look." Draco held out his little hands for Harry to inspect, and he quickly noticed the many cuts that he had across the palms of his hands, but Draco smiled all the same. "They don't hurt much, I wouldn't let mummy heal them because I wanted to show you!" Draco giggled to himself before drawing his hands back to the chains of the swing.

Harry found that very odd, surely he could have just taken the bandages off to show him, they couldn't possibly heal that quickly. But Harry wasn't given much time to think about that, because Draco had started talking to him again.

"So how was school today?" Draco always asked that question, he seemed very curious about school.

"It wasn't too bad," Harry replied simply. "I finished a whole book again, that's four in a row!"

"Wow, I wish I could read that good. I still get stuck on some of the words and it takes me ages," Draco sighed impatiently. He didn't much like having to wait, especially when it was his own fault he was waiting. He always wanted to be good at things quickly, because that made his daddy happy.

Harry didn't think anything would make Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon happy, even if Harry was a genius, they'd still lock him up and pretend he didn't even exist. Dudley always made them happy, and he couldn't do anything good except punch people and eat lots.

They talked for a long time about reading, swinging alongside each other until they got so high they couldn't talk anymore, because they were laughing so hard. It was then that Draco called through the laughter to Harry.

"I'm going to jump!"

"What!"

"I'm going to jump off!"

And with that, Draco released his grip on the chains, and soared high into the air. He went a very long way, landing some thirty feet away from the swingset without even stumbling. Harry stared in awe as he continued to swing.

"Bet you can't get further than that!" Draco laughed, smiling widely at Harry as he swung.

"Bet you I can!"

Harry took a few more extra big swings, concentrating hard on beating Draco, before releasing his own grip on the swing and flying into the air. And that was just what he was doing, _flying!_ It felt as though he could go on forever, until he started losing height, and headed down towards the ground where Draco waited for him.

He landed with a delicate thud, turning on the spot to see that, yes, he had made it further than Draco, by a whole two or so feet in fact. He laughed happily, raising his hands into the air and dancing around a shocked looking Draco. "I beat you! I won!"

"Wow, that was a real good jump!" Draco finally smiled at Harry, running toward him and sweeping him into a tight hug.

Woah.

Harry had never been hugged before, by anyone. He had seen it on the television, imagined it at night. But this... It was so warm, and fuzzy, it made his heart beat real fast and his knees go all weak. All too quickly it was gone, Draco pulled away, the smile still playing on his lips as he watched Harry's face.

"That was fun, let's do that again tomorrow!" Harry blinked at him, was he talking about the swinging or the hugging, because Harry definitely wanted more of the hugging. He finally nodded, pushing his glasses up his nose before smiling stupidly at his friend.

"I should go home, I have to get another haircut this afternoon." Harry could see the disappointment in Draco's eyes at the words.

"Another one? Wow, Harry, your hair sure grows fast." He sighed dramatically, before walking over to Harry's backpack and picking it up from the sand. "See you tomorrow, then?"

"Definitely!" With that, both boys offered their right hands, shaking them happily before Harry took his backpack and headed back towards Privet Drive

* * *

><p>When Aunt Petunia pulled up out the front of the tiny Barber shop, she looked particularly sour. Harry didn't dare question it, knowing better than to ask questions to his Aunt and Uncle. He climbed from the back seat of the car and followed inside.<p>

The Barber was one of Harry's least favourite places to go, behind number four, Privet Drive, and his school of course. It smelt strange in here, and the Barber himself looked quite frightening.

He was a plump man, though he was ridiculously tall. The top of his head was completely bald and the ring of hair he did have was a dirty grey colour, and frizzed out like an ugly kind of halo. His eyebrows were tremendous, hiding his beady little eyes under the bushiness of them. They scared Harry the most, those eyebrows.

He squinted at Harry as he walked through the door, the little bell tinkling into the silence, and offered him a seat. Harry sat so high in the chair that his feet were very far from the ground, and he had to be lifted into place. It wasn't, considering the scrawniness of him.

Aunt Petunia lectured the barber for a good five minutes on the fact that Harry all too often came home looking as though he hadn't been at all, insisting that she stay to supervise, and that the fringe stay long enough to hide that 'ugly scar.'

It took twenty agonizing minutes of the bushy browed barber snipping at his hair for his Aunt to finally be satisfied. She paid quickly and bustled Harry out of the shop in a huff.

The drive home was silent as usual.

When Harry entered the house he went straight for his cupboard, staying there until the smart rapping of Aunt Petunia's boney knuckles told him dinner was ready. He walked into the dining room quietly, sitting next to his bulky cousin and staring down at his much-smaller serve of roast, though he didn't mind much, he was hungry, and wasn't going to complain.

Dinner went by uneventfully.

It was when Harry was washing the dishes that something finally happened.

"I thought you were taking the boy to get a haircut?" Uncle Vernon's voice rang out from behind him.

"I did- what on Earth!" Aunt Petunia gasped out of sight. "That's it, I've had enough! I'll do it myself!"

Harry really did turn around at this part, staring at his Aunt in shock. What was she going to do? He watched her fling open one of the kitchen drawers, digging around for a few moments before pulling a pair of long, shining scissors from the shrapnel. She glared at him for a moment, before pointing towards a dining chair and shrieking.

"Sit! Now!"


	4. Soap Opera

**Soap Opera  
><strong>

Harry got a month in his cupboard after his hair had miraculously grown back overnight. He didn't even think it was possible, and had spent the whole night staring at the underside of the stairs, worrying about what new nickname all the children would give him when they saw his ridiculous new haircut in the morning.

It was very much to his surprise, as well as a livid looking Aunt and Uncle, that Harry's hair had somehow managed to grow two inches overnight. His Uncle had been furious, the veins popping out of his purple face as he berated Harry for something that he didn't even know was humanly possible, before pushing him out the door with the promise of his cupboard when he returned.

He had run to the park that afternoon, explaining very fast what had happened to a shocked little Draco, before pulling his backpack higher onto his shoulders and sprinting home before his uncle could question his whereabouts.

* * *

><p>Today was Harry's last day in the cupboard, and he couldn't be more thankful. As much as he loved to watched the spiders dangling precariously from the ceiling whenever Dudley rumbled up the staircase towards his television, they weren't all that good to talk to.<p>

He had received dinner in his cupboard every night of the month, usually cold and dry, though that didn't bother him as much as the lack of company, because the only people Harry got to see outside of his cupboard were the children that called him nasty names and never picked him for their team. For the first time in months, he felt that hopeless longing settle in his tummy. The longing for the friend he needed so desperately.

He missed Draco.

At first he wasn't quite sure what the feeling was, the tightness in his chest that made him feel even more sad and lonely than he ever had before. It took him just under a week to work out what it was, sitting in his cupboard and listening to the soap opera Aunt Petunia was always watching. He really didn't see why she liked it so much, it was just lots of people crying and kissing from time to time. Surely that wasn't that big a deal.

It had been a conversation between a particularly tearful girl with what Harry decided, was a voice that sounded as though she were holding her nose, and a man with a very deep voice. He listened to her sobs as she talked to the deep voiced man.

"I - I just m-miss you so - so much. It feels like s-someones ripped m-my heart out!"

So that's what that pain was. Harry had sat still for a very long time, letting the words sink in and finally come to the conclusion that that was definitely why he felt so extra sad. He missed his one extra special friend more than he ever thought was possible. His little heart wasn't used to missing people... well, he did miss his parents very very much, but this felt very different.

He had spent hours thinking about how odd it felt to miss somebody, unknowing that the young blonde boy he played with was curled up on his own bed, thinking exactly the same thing.

* * *

><p>Harry had left the house very early in the morning, the air still crisp and dewy from the night. He walked to school the extra long way, keeping his eyes trained on the ground as he kicked pebbles up the footpath in front of him. He had a very bad feeling about today, and even though he didn't have to stay cooped up in his cupboard anymore, and he would finally be seeing Draco that afternoon, a lump still sat uncomfortably in his throat. That was never very good.<p>

* * *

><p>Harry arrived at school right on time, hurrying past all the children yelling his nickname in his direction and bolting into his classroom with his head down, dropping his bag on the rack and plopping himself down nervously in his tiny little chair.<p>

The other children had been getting more and more brave as the school year went on, not only calling him his nasty nickname but tripping him on his way to his desk and stealing his coloured pencils. He only had two colours left now. the silver and green glinting out at him happily in the otherwise empty tin can that held each child's pencils.

He did very much like those colours, and the only reason they hadn't vanished yet was because Harry would put them in his pockets at lunchtime and take them to the sandpit with him. Once or twice he had forgotten to put them back at the end of the day, and had ended up taking them home and drawing idly on the wall of his cupboard with them.

There were two boys on his wall now, a silver one, who was tall and lean, and a green one, small and scruffy-looking, but smiling all the same.

The morning passed without any incidents, Harry spending the class in silence, practicing his handwriting, over and over again.

When the lunch bell finally clanged, the lump in Harry's throat was more like a very pointy rock. He ran to the sandpit and shrank away from the other children as much as he could manage. It wasn't enough.

Dudley was bored today.

Harry had been so nervous he didn't even draw out any of his friends in the sand, giving his cousin nothing satisfying to stomp on, besides Harry of course.

* * *

><p>Harry walked out of the school gates that afternoon with his head hung low on his shoulders, shaking fingers clutching to the straps of his backpack, and a brilliant purple bruise flourishing across the young skin on his little face.<p>

His teacher didn't even notice it, or at least, she pretended not to notice. It wasn't unusual for Harry to come into class with explicable injuries, but even Harry knew that this one was extra bad to what he usually got. He wished somebody cared about him. He wished he had his mummy to kiss it better. But he didn't, and there was nothing in the world he could do to make it so. She was gone, and she took every hope of Harry ever being cared for with her.

He thought he might cry a few times, feeling the stinging in his eyes and the tightness in his throat, but he blinked it away. Uncle Vernon had always told him that crying did nothing for anyone, except making them a sissy. He was not a sissy.

It took him a very long time to get to the park where he hoped his friend was waiting for him, the side of his head was hurting real bad, and it was slowing him down quite a bit.

He got there in the end, tottering carefully into the park and looking around him until spotting the white shock of hair across the park, already seated in the sandpit they both spent so much time in together. He walked up to the boy, who seemed to be concentrating hard on the sand in front of him, his tongue poking out of his mouth just the tiniest bit. It almost made Harry smile. But it hurt to smile.

Draco didn't even look up as he spoke to Harry, giving a triumphant yelp and clapping happily. "Harry, I did it! I got him to move! Look!" Draco pointed at the simple little person who was waving from the sand.

"Well done." Harry's voice crackled strangely, and that tightness in his throat was back. No, he mustn't cry in front of Draco, he couldn't let him think he was a sissy.

Draco raised him glittering silver eyes to Harry's at the sound of his voice, his face falling almost comically at the sight of Harry. "What happened to you!" He scrambled to his feet to look closer at Harry's face, his eyes wide with shock, "who did that to you, Harry?"

"Nobody.." the answer was automatic, he had given the same answer to his Aunt and Uncle so many times before he had lost count, not that they meant it in the same way that Draco seemed to. His intentions seemed kind, and gentle, nothing like Uncle Vernon's accusing prods.

"Don't lie, Harry, you couldn't do _that _to yourself."

"... It doesn't matter." Harry turned his eyes to the floor, ashamed of the way he looked in front of his friend. Draco couldn't possibly want to be friends with him now.

He felt fingers push his chin back up so he was looking Draco in the eye. "It does matter, Harry. You're my friend, and... I care about you."

The tears were there before he even knew what was happening, blurring up his eyes and running down his face, and then, Draco was hugging him.

It was as though the world just disappeared, and the only thing that existed was Draco and Harry and this _feeling._ It was so warm and tight, like a blanket on a cold night, and it only made Harry cry harder, tears running onto his friends little shoulders as he sobbed quietly.

They stayed like that for a very long time, arms wrapped around one another and Draco's head leaning gently against Harry's messy hair, eyes closed, gently humming the songs his mummy would sing to him when he was sad.

Harry pulled away first, wiping his eyes on the hem of his overlarge shirt and sniffling softly.

"I'm sorry."

Draco knitted his eyebrows together in confusion. "For what?"

"For crying. You probably don't want to talk to me - "

"Don't be silly, Harry." Draco's tone was serious, though he spoke at barely more than a whisper. "I know you would do it for me, because you care about me just as much as I care about you, which is very very much. I'm not going to stop being your friend because your hurt, that just makes me want to be here for you even more."

Harry stared at him through puffy eyes, fresh tears prickling at the corners. "Why?"

"Because that's what best friends do."

* * *

><p>The two boys had settled in the sand after Harry's arrival, facing one another as Draco's stick-friend continued to wave between them.<p>

"Who did that to you, Harry?"

"My cousin, he does it lots, but not usually this bad."

The next question took Harry by surprise. "Have you told your mummy about it?"

He considered avoiding the truth like he usually did, but it seemed a little hard to wriggle out of this one. "I don't... I don't have a mummy to tell, Draco."

Silence.

"She and my daddy died when I was very little, I can't even remember them at all." Harry stared at his hands, folded in his lap, "I'm not allowed to talk about them at all."

Draco was still silent, so Harry finally found the courage to look up at his friend, who had his eyes locked on Harry, his mouth slightly open and tears running down his pale cheeks.

"Oh no! No, Draco, don't cry! I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to - "

"Why didn't you tell me.."

"I... I'm sorry, I'm just so used to being threatened every time I talk about them, I guess it's a bit hard."

Draco continued to watch him, wiping the streaks from his face and crawling over to Harry, his face barely inches from his own. "I'm sorry, Harry." he murmured, before gently pressing his lips to Harry's forehead, right onto the lightning bolt scar hidden below his hair.

* * *

><p><em>I can't believe I just did that to Harry... I feel awful.<em>

_I'll try to make the next chapter a little bit happier before I drop the bombshell ;) _

_Love you guys  
><em>


	5. Love

_I figured out that if I listen to Adele while I'm writing I don't get stuck as easily. I don't think this chapter is quite up to scratch, so please excuse me if it isn't as structured as the rest of my chapters are. It's getting harder and harder to write._

_Also another thing, the response to the last chapter was PHENOMENAL and I'd just like to thank every one of you just for reading. I love each and every one of you. Anyway, here we go._

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 5 - Love<strong>

The two boys sat and talked together until the stars started appearing in the sky. Harry had never stayed outside so late before, and even though he was pretty scared of what his Aunt and Uncle were going to do to him when he got home, Harry had never felt more at ease with himself.

Draco had talked to him about lots of different things, about how his daddy expected Draco to be just like him, even though the one thing Draco very much wanted to do was be a healer. Harry had thought that was an odd thing to call a doctor, but thought little of it. Draco told him about how his daddy had lots of friends, and that Draco had to act very grown up when they came over to the house, just in case he embarrassed his father.

It made Harry very sad that Draco had to do that for his own daddy, because Harry had always been so sure that mummy's and daddy's were supposed to love their children no matter what happened. Harry didn't even know how they could even be embarrassed by Draco at all, he was the nicest person had ever met in his life.

Harry told Draco about the other children at his school, feeling slightly ashamed when he told the blonde boy the nasty nickname the students had given him. For a fraction of a second, Harry had expected Draco to laugh at him, but when he looked up, Draco had looked shocked and just a little bit angry.

Draco had told Harry that he shouldn't have to put up with horrible people like that in his life. Because Harry was special, and all the other children should be falling over each other trying to be his friends.

Harry told Draco that no matter how many children fell over themselves for him, Draco would always be his most important, best friend. No matter what.

They hugged each other goodbye that night, their arms wrapped around each other for an extra long time.

* * *

><p>Something seemed to ignite inside Harry's eyes after that day, and they shines so piercingly green that it was almost frightening. Harry didn't even notice that it had happened, being too short to look in the mirror long enough to actually look at himself properly, but all of the other children at school seemed to notice it.<p>

They changed the way they treated Harry, they still avoided him of course, but it wasn't for the same reasons that they did before. It was Dudley's fault. Because Dudley got bored very easy, and he was very dim.

Harry had been sitting in the sandpit two days after Dudley and his gang had beat Harry up. He was watching Lily as she picked flowers for her friends, her pretty red hair dancing around her. Harry loved her hair.

Dudley had tottered over to him with a few of his friends, smiling maliciously at his scrawny cousin. He stomped right on the spot where Lily was picking her flowers, smashing her out of existence all over again. Harry saw red. He stood up, puffing himself up to his full height and staring at Dudley, right into his eyes.

When Dudley went to shove Harry away from him, something very strange happened.

His fat hands were barely two inches away from Harry's chest, but it was close enough, and he jumped back with a yelp, pulling his hands into himself and staring at them with wide eyes. Harry watched as very angry looking red burns spread across the palms of Dudley's hands, swelling nastily as Dudley waved them about stupidly, as though it would somehow make the burning go away.

One of his friends tried next, raising a closed fist to try and punch Harry very hard on the nose. Harry's eyes squeezed closed, waiting for the pain, but instead, the sound of howling came.

Opening his eyes a crack, Harry nearly laughed aloud at what he was looking at. His cousin was still shaking his hands through the air, tears running down his face, and the friend that had gone to punch Harry, seemed to running around in circles, shrieking at the angry red welts on his hand.

Harry had been so angry at his cousin for stepping on Lily, and now, the heat was rolling off of him with the intensity of a furnace. He stared at the group for a moment longer, the other children backing away from an angry looking Harry, before he ran as fast as he could to his bag, and bolted out the conveniently unlocked front gate.

* * *

><p>Since then, nobody would go within thirty feet of Harry, and he wasn't sure if it was a good thing or not. Sure, all of the children had been very nasty to him ever since he had started at the school, mostly because of Dudley, but Harry wasn't sure if he quite liked the isolation. He never read with anybody in class anyway, but at least people had sat a bit closer to him.<p>

Now all the children just whispered behind their hands as he tottered past, watching him cautiously.

But, at least he wasn't being called Pottyface anymore, and nobody was stomping on Lily at lunch.

* * *

><p>Aunt Petunia had taken to locking Harry in his cupboard every time he got home from the park, ushering him into the house without touching him at all. Harry wasn't quite sure why, even though he had somehow managed to burn his cousin, Harry was sure that Aunt Petunia would never believe in something as farfetched as that. After all, the Dursley's had always been very persistent that there was no. such. thing. as. <em>magic.<em>

Harry didn't know how many times he had heard his Uncle say that to him when Harry used that word to try and explain things that just didn't seem to make any sense. The M word was banned at number four, Privet drive. But it never did much to stop Harry from thinking it.

The fire in his eyes didn't seem to be helping that much either, spending the hours locked away in his cupboard, letting his imagination fill the tiny room. He thought about Dragons, and what it would be like to come face to face with one in real life. He thought about all of the strange things that seemed to be happening around him more and more often.

He thought about Lily and James and Sirius, and how impossible it was for them to be able to move. But Draco could do that too now, and as every day went by, it seemed that the impossible was happening all around him.

Just like magic.

Harry laughed to himself when he thought about the term, whispering it to himself in the quiet of his cupboard, so that only the spiders dangling above his messy head could hear him. "Just like magic..." He would giggle to himself until he had stitches in his tummy, the words never seemed to lose their meaning.

His dinner would be served in his cupboard, cold and dry just like before, but it didn't seem to worry him at all, wolfing down his food and smiling contentedly to himself, he would walk out of his cupboard just long enough to place his dishes in the kitchen sink, before scampering happily back to the cupboard under the stairs.

* * *

><p>Draco and Harry were both laying on the grass, eyes staring out at the brilliant blue sky and hands loosely linked together between them. Draco had taken to holding Harry's hand quite some time ago, saying he liked the way Harry's fingers fitted with his. Harry didn't mind, because the feel of Draco's skin again his made his fingers tingle.<p>

Tomorrow would be Harry's 9th birthday, but only two people had really acknowledged that fact. Draco had learned Harry's birthday off by heart after the first summer they had spent together, and Harry had done the same for Draco.

Draco had become accustomed with the idea of the Dursley's forgetting about Harry, and it seemed that, while he was still very angry at what they had done to Harry, especially the fact that Harry was living in a _cupboard, _he had to keep his emotions in check, for Harry's sake.

Harry had never told Draco directly, in all the time that they had been friends, that Draco truly was the most important person in his life. He had gone through school so far being avoided by the children, all except for Dudley, who seemed to have found his confidence again, and a small group of cronies that would follow along behind him.

It didn't bother him though, because despite Dudley's growing strength, he had grown much rounder in the few years that had passed since school began, and was barely lucky to manage even a brush at Harry's hair. The only people who managed to touch Harry at all now, were Uncle Vernon when he was throwing Harry into his cupboard by the collar of his still-too-big shirt, and Draco, whose touch lingered on Harry's skin for hours after they parted ways, far gentler and kinder than the hands of his Uncle.

As the two of them had grown up alongside one another, seeing themselves change from day to day, many questions had graced their lips. Questions that any other child their age would ask of their parents. But Harry didn't have any of those, and Draco's parents didn't seem interested in his 'pointless questioning,' leaving them with nobody to question but each other.

They asked all sorts of things, how day turned to night, where they had come from, and what would happen to them when they grew up. It changed from day to day, from the naive questioning of a six year old, to the eight-nearly-nine year old that was becoming more and more aware of all the wonders and terrors of the world.

But today, lying in the grass side by side, Draco was the one who asked the question.

"What is love?" He asked, his eyes sliding across to look at Harry next to him.

That was a very odd question of him to ask, thought Harry, although, they often asked strange questions of each other.

"I don't really know, Draco." He looked over at the silver eyes, burning brightly like his own had for so long now. "I guess it's when you really care about someone, so much that you would do anything for them."

"Do you think that only a mum and a dad can love each other? Or can friends love each other, too?"

Harry smiled to himself as he thought about it. Harry really didn't know very much about love either, except what he had heard about when he was listening to Aunt Petunia's Soap Operas. They didn't help much though.

"I guess they could, I mean, if you care about someone enough, why shouldn't you be allowed to love them?"

"Yeah, you're right. Thanks Harry..." Draco stared back up at the sky, the warm breeze running across them gently on the grass.

They were silent for a few moments before Draco finally broke the calm.

"Hey, Harry?"

"Yeah?"

"I love you."

Harry couldn't help but smile as his heart swelled inside his chest. "I love you, too, Draco."

Harry didn't even think twice when the words were sighed from his lips, because for all he knew, he had all the time in the world to spend with the best friend he loved. The best friend who hugged him every single day and showed him the cuts on his hands from the roses and held his hand.

But it was all going to change.


	6. Shatter

_I got home from work with this whole chapter formulated in my head, which is amazing considering how terrible my brain is at working out how to fit everything together. __So for the first time I actually have three chapters up in less than a week. yay! _

_I'd like to take this opportunity to thank JustR__ for the amazing reviews you've given on the last two chapters. And of course everybody else who has reviewed, you guys make me want to write so much quicker._

_This chapter is way shorter than any of the others, but I didn't write any further, because that would take me to a whole other era, and I'm saving that for next time_

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 6 - Shatter<strong>

Harry woke up to the chime of the ugly clock in the kitchen, striking seven. He stared at the underside of the staircase for a few minutes, waiting for the rumbling of Uncle Vernon descending the stairs to collect his morning paper and complain about politicians over the breakfast Aunt Petunia would be expecting Harry to make.

But that wasn't going to happen today, because even though none of the Dursleys so much as batted an eyelid at the idea of Harry actually having a birthday at all, Harry knew that outside the front doors of number four, the whole world was waiting to celebrate with him.

Because this year, just like last year, Harry wasn't being forgotten, he wasn't spending it with the spiders. He was going to spend it with the only person that was actually important to him, because Draco cared more than anybody else that it was Harry's birthday today.

"Being nine is a pretty big deal." Draco had explained how important the age was to Harry many times now, probably because he had turned nine months ago. "It means there's only one more year until you hit double digits, and only two more years for us to get away with doing stuff like this-"

Harry remembered the time that Draco had pointed towards their friends in the sand, who had become far more elaborate as the years had passed. Lily was still there of course, and James and Sirius, but it was almost as though they had grown and changed with the boys, their movements fluid and well practiced in the sand.

"What do you mean only two more years?" Harry had been curious, Draco always seemed to know things that Harry was completely in the dark about. Like Dragons, and muggles.

Harry had heard Draco complaining about Harry's 'stupid muggle family' whenever he wished to refer to the Dursleys. Harry had asked him about it, and Draco had answered simply 'people who aren't like us.'

All the children at his school had to be muggles then, because they were nothing like him or Draco.

But today was not about muggles, or Dragons, or anything. It was about Harry and Draco celebrating his ninth birthday, and something about that gave Harry the most excitable jitters he had ever experienced.

He got dressed in silence, after finally hearing his Uncle huff past his cupboard door and towards the kitchen. Then he proceeded to wait, hearing Petunia calling out to her Husband about the neighbours washing habits as she walked into the kitchen minutes later. Dudley took the longest, thumping down the staircase some fifteen minutes after his parents, each step creaking beneath his hefty weight. Harry sniggered, his cousin may be spoiled, but Harry really didn't envy how much he was looking like a pig in a wig these days.

He didn't waste a second scrambling out of his cupboard as quietly as he could, and running out of the front door. He had become very good at sneaking out of the house of a morning, seeing as breakfast was almost pointless for the abysmal amount of food that was thrown onto his plate.

He clicked the door closed, turning to look out onto Privet Drive. It was a very ordinary neighbourhood, the cars shining from being obsessively polished everyday, and lawns manicured into emerald blankets from copious amounts of watering. Harry always wondered where these people found the time to do such pointless things when every time he walked down the streets they seemed to be glued to the telly or arguing about the bills.

He walked down the road quickly, running his fingers through his misbehaving hair. He wished it would sit flat, but he knew that would never happen, it had been like this his whole life.

The air was thick and warm, even in the early morning, and Harry could feel the oversized shirt draped across his shoulders beginning to cling slightly to his skin. It was terribly uncomfortable, but he didn't mind much, because it was a small price to pay to spend his Birthday with his best friend.

When he reached the park, Draco was already there, his white hair shining in the sunlight and his slender frame already bounding in Harry's direction.

They pulled each other into a rib cracking hug, Harry's face breaking into a grin that made his cheeks ache, in the best way possible.

"Happy Birthday!" Draco released Harry, looking into his eyes and smiling in the carefree way that only Harry ever saw. "I got you a present."

Harry watched Draco turn and begin to run back toward the playground where he had been waiting. He followed his friend without a second thought, laughing to himself as he ran. Draco had got him a present! He didn't even know why it surprised him so much, his heart swelling in his chest and his eyes burning even brighter than usual.

Draco stopped by the edge of the sandpit, bending down before turning back to Harry, his silver eyes glittering and a neatly wrapped package held in his little hands.

"Here" he handed it to Harry, who sat down on the grass to begin unwrapping his gift. "I got it for you, because I know how much you love drawing your friends in the sand."

Harry stared in awe as the final corner of wrapping paper was peeled away, revealing a collection of some of the most magnificent things Harry had ever seen. His eyes were first drawn to the quill that rested on top of everything, the long feather curving delicately, it's black surface flecked with gold and green and blue, changing as the light hit it. He had never seen a quill before, with the exception of those old-style movies Uncle Vernon sometimes watched, they had been so bland in those movies, especially compared to this.

The next thing he noticed was a collection of very tightly furled scrolls of parchment, each tied with thin green ribbon. Beside them were three small corked bottles. Harry picked one out with tentative fingers, holding it up to the sun to see the thin black liquid inside it.

It was all so amazing.

"I figured, now you can have your friends with you, wherever you go..."

Harry practically pounced on Draco, pulling him into another tight hug and giggling to himself. "I love it, Draco! It's perfect!"

Draco laughed, nuzzling himself into Harry and sighing happily. "I'm glad you like it."

"Like it? I love it! Almost as much as I love you, Draco."

The blonde boy blushed as Harry pulled away, grinning as though all his Christmas' had come at once.

* * *

><p>Harry spent close to half an hour examining all of the things Draco had given him, with Draco explaining all the different things about each part of his gift. Harry was entranced by the quill most of all.<p>

Once some of the novelty of his present had worn off (he was sure he would spend the entire night looking at his things later) he turned to Draco and smiled contentedly.

"Thankyou, Draco. I've never gotten a birthday present before."

Draco's face fell slightly, and something fiery blazed in those pretty eyes of his. "You deserve every present in the world, Harry, you're the kindest, humblest, most caring person I've ever met." He dropped his eyes to his hands. "You're so brave, Harry."

That was the last thing Harry thought he was.

He was the kid that got forgotten, beat up by his much bigger cousin and locked in a cupboard every night. There was nothing at all brave about being forgotten about. That just made him nobody at all. But today was his birthday, and he wasn't going to argue with Draco today.

"Want to go swing for a bit?"

"Yeah."

And with that, the boys rose from their spots on the grass, grasped each others hands and walked toward the swingset.

* * *

><p>They spent hours in the park that day, Draco producing biscuits for them to share for lunch from one of his pockets, laughing at Harry's shocked expression and talking about all the pointless things.<p>

By the time the sky began to darken, the two boys were well and truly worn out, they bid each other goodbye with a final happy birthday and a thankyou, Harry's arms wrapped around his gift gingerly, before parting ways for with the remnants of innocent smiles spread across their young faces.

* * *

><p>When Harry returned to the park the next day, Draco wasn't there waiting for him.<p>

He sat in the sand for hours, the sun burning his skin. He gave up, and went home.

* * *

><p>Days turned to weeks, but Draco didn't come. Every day he waited anxiously, his hands wringing each other in panic.<p>

He was losing his best friend. Where had he gone.

Weeks turned to months. Harry returned to school, to the hand of his cousin, the little ball of hope inside him flickering weakly as he fell into the loneliness he hadn't felt in almost three long years. He went to the park every single day after school and waited.

Until finally, Harry's little heart broke, and he left the park for the last time, the flame extinguished behind his eyes, and his heart shattered into a thousand jagged pieces.

* * *

><p><em>Please don't hate me.<em>

_Review? Please?_


	7. Foot Prints

_First off, I should probably let you all know where on Earth I have been for the last few weeks, so here goes. Number one, I've just started my second semester of University which means I'm up all night trying to get my head around 'The functions of the Brain' and all that jazz, and I'm pretty much dead on my feet. Number two, I've had the flu (which is actually like 5 different flus all rolled into one) for two whole weeks! And it's driving me crazy. _

_yeah, terribly sorry but I haven't had the mental capacity to make a decent chapter at all._

_Anyway...  
><em>

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><p><strong>Chapter 7 -<strong>** Foot Prints**_  
><em>

Harry had found a shoebox in Dudley's second bedroom, poured it's contents onto the mountains of broken and boring toys that were stacked around the place, and took it down into his cupboard.

The Dursleys were sitting in the lounge, in front of the television as was the usual for this time of the night. Harry could hear Aunt Petunia fussing over her 'Darling Dudders' and the fact that he had managed to win a local boxing Championship over the weekend, and didn't even bother to roll his eyes at the gesture.

He was keeping as far away from the Dursleys as possible right now, feeling that he was just a bit too fragile to put up with his stupid Uncle probing him over the fact that he was still managing to breathe.

Harry was amazed at this himself, actually.

He hadn't eaten properly in weeks now, even by his own measly standards. Occasionally he would emerge from the quiet of his cupboard to attempt a piece of toast before he headed off to school, but never much more than that. His Aunt and Uncle didn't even seem to notice, probably because Dudley would eat Harry's share before either of them had a chance to notice he was even missing.

School was disastrous. He could barely even manage his math problems, staring blankly at the page until the teacher would remind him sternly to get on with his work, to which he would instead take up staring blankly at his hand, clutching at the thin ball point pen, willing himself to at least write something. It never worked.

His grades began to drop. Not that anybody noticed.

Harry didn't really care about them that much either, because there were far more important things than being able to multiply seven by six. Like having friends.

Draco had been gone for exactly four months today, Harry knew because he had struck each day off on the calendar next to his bed, in thick black marker. He had stared at it every night before he went to bed, his chest tight and his eyes swollen. He wanted Draco to come back so badly it hurt to even breathe.

He sat on his bed and closed the cupboard door gently, switching on the little light above his head and looking around himself, trying to decide where he should start. His eyes fell on the calendar first, and he gently plucked it from his wall, and placed it gingerly into the shoebox on his lap. He continued pulling things from their places on his shelves and walls, placing them atop the calendar.

The rose from Draco's mothers' garden, which Harry had flattened carefully with a book he had stolen from the study. The storybook Draco had given to him last Christmas, it's pages splayed from the many nights Harry had spent reading it, over and over. The scrolls of parchment and the ink bottles he had received for his birthday, and of course, that beautiful quill that he loved so much.

He continued to pile everything that reminded him of Draco into the little shoebox, before closing the lid and carefully placing the box underneath his bed. He could never throw it away, that would be just a bit too painful.

He glanced around himself, briefly taking in how bare his cupboard looked all of a sudden, before lying back on his bed and switching off the light. He listened to Aunt Petunia's persistent talking about how proud she was of Dudley being able to punch somebody really hard for a good ten minutes, before he finally managed to fall asleep, not even bothering to change out of the clothes he had worn to school that day.

* * *

><p>The weather was abysmal. Harry glared at the thick grey clouds as he stepped out the front door, his stomach protesting loudly to the lack of breakfast, but Harry ignored it stubbornly. The air was freezing, and the thin jumper that Harry had been given on his fifth birthday doing little to protect him against the icy wind. Dudley had a bad habit of stretching his clothes, even when he was much younger, and Harry had always ended up with them, so large that they wouldn't fit him properly for years.<p>

It was still slightly too large for him, especially considering how unnaturally scrawny Harry was.

He walked to school with his head bowed to the wind, his hair whipping away from his face and leaving his forehead bare to the cold. By the time he reached the school gates, his cheeks were glowing pink and his eyes were watering terribly behind his glasses, his whole body shook from the cold and his fingers were beyond numb.

He didn't even try to concentrate on his work. At lunchtime it rained, the children were made to stay in their classrooms. Harry did what he always did on days just like this, when he couldn't see his friends in the sandpit. The only friends he had left.

He drew.

He stopped using the green and silver pencils that he had grown so accustomed to drawing with. They had been put into the shoebox with everything else. Instead, he picked up the red pencil and began to draw out his friends on the paper. Then the gold.

He decided that the red and gold was just as beautiful and the green and silver, if not even more so. Lily smiled at him from the piece of paper, flicking her hair over her shoulder as James moved to stand next to her, smiling happily, whether from seeing Harry or from winning over a very stubborn Lily, Harry really couldn't tell.

They really were wonderful together, and Harry loved that about them. He loved how different they were from one another, and how none of that even seemed to matter. Harry felt another fragment of his heart float down into his stomach.

The other children kept their distance from Harry, leaving the bullying up to Dudley, who seemed to be the only one brave, or stupid enough to go anywhere near Harry. Too many times over the past three years Dudley had come out second best after trying to pick on Harry in front of everyone. All the children knew there was something very strange about the Potter kid, because nobody else had ever been able to scare aware Dudley without even getting into fisty cuffs with the boy.

But lately, Dudley had been getting more and more confident, and it seemed like Harry wasn't so scary anymore. Of course they all continued avoiding him in the playground, not wanting to risk something strange happening to them, but they were now willing to laugh along every time Dudley managed to get close enough to Harry in the sandpit to stand on those funny drawings he always seemed to make, and punching the tiny boy right between the eyes.

Harry was always taping his glasses back together after lunch nowadays. The teacher didn't even notice.

The day ended, and the rain was still pouring. Harry watched the children scrambling into their parents cars, including Dudley. He watched the Dursleys drive away, Dudley's piggy face pressed to the back window, watching Harry with a horrible grin playing on his lips.

Harry walked through the front door dripping wet twenty minutes later, tracking muddy footprints through the house, he dumped his soaked schoolbag in his cupboard, looked back at the muddy prints and smiled to himself. He could hear Aunt Petunia yammering in the kitchen, hear the television blaring and the occasional grunts of Uncle Vernon.

He ran down the hall, up the stairs and into the bathroom, giggling quietly as he ran hot water through his hair to try and warm himself up, before shaking his head, spraying water onto the spotless mirror, and running back down the stairs towards his cupboard.

Aunt Petunia was going to be livid, and Harry didn't even care.

The answer came fifteen minutes later to the loudest screech Harry had ever heard leave his Aunt's mouth.

"OH MY GOODNESS! VERNON!"

Harry sat calmly on his bed, a crooked smile on his face and his wet hair dripping onto his sheets. He counted to three.

"BOY!"

He was amazed his flimsy cupboard door could withstand the thumping it recieved a second later, and he could have sworn he could hear the timber splintering under each thud of his Uncles fat fist.

"YOU GET OUT HERE RIGHT NOW! I'M GOING TO WRING YOUR BLOODY NECK BOY!"

Harry actually laughed now, the strangest laugh he had ever heard. It came out all wrong, broken and hysterical, as though all the hope had been drained from him, and he just didn't care anymore.

But, of course he didn't care anymore. Why should he? The laugh was perfect. He flicked the lock up.

His Uncle just about fell on top of him, and for a moment Harry actually feared for his life. He stared up at the man in front of him, that veins in his forehead throbbing and his face a deep shade of purple, eyes popping and his bushy mustache quivering. It was quite terrifying.

And then, Harry felt fingers closing around his throat, and his feet leaving the ground.

* * *

><p>Harry sat heavily at his desk, eyes downcast and hands shaking slightly in his lap. He didn't listen to the teacher as she spoke at the front of the room, and he didn't raise his eyes once, meaning he didn't notice all the children staring at him with horrified expressions on their faces.<p>

The hand prints surrounding his neck were a sickening blue colour, and his breath came in shallow wheezes.

Harry couldn't believe the lengths he was going to, because this was beyond painful. Every time he moved he would wince violently, his head throbbing and his eyes beginning to water. He prayed it would work, it just had to work. Please please please let it work.

Draco was always there when something absolutely horrible happened to Harry.

Always.

The day seemed to drag on forever, so long in fact that Harry managed to finish his work well before lunchtime, and chose instead to draw pictures on the back of his paper, in the red and gold pencils that were used far more than all the others. He drew a little blonde boy, smiling up at him without a care in the world. Harry stared at him through bloodshot eyes, another few fragments of his heart floating down to the growing collection in his stomach.

He didn't draw in the sand at lunch, he couldn't bare to see how happy Lily and James were. Instead, he stared at the smooth sand and ran the tips of his fingers lightly across the bruising on his neck. Nobody came near him at all, not even Dudley.

When the end of school finally came, Harry left the classroom before anybody else had so much as left their seats, running through the gates and down the road toward the park he had taken refuge in so many times, the slightest hint of hope sparking in his empty green eyes, making them glow ever so slightly.

He stumbled into the park, out of breath and a headache throbbing in his forehead, but he didn't care. He looked around frantically, his eyes wide. But Draco wasn't there. Harry dropped his backpack and ran to the playground. But Draco wasn't there, either. He stared around, feeling the prick of tears in his eyes, and fell to the ground as the rest of his tiny little heart fell out of his chest.

* * *

><p>Harry didn't even bother to run from his cousin anymore. He didn't bother to walk faster whenever someone sneered at him from across the playground, and he didn't notice the change in the other children in his class. The silence wasn't hostile anymore, it was peaceful.<p>

The only comfort he had for himself was the red and gold pencils in his pencil tin, and even those were growing short.

* * *

><p>One day, toward the end of the school year, ten whole months without Draco, the child sitting next to Harry offered their own red and gold pencils to the tiny boy with the lightning bolt scar. Harry had stared in shock, thanked the child and put the brand new pencils into his own tin.<p>

He spent the rest of the day trying to figure out why anyone would do that for him.

* * *

><p><em>I don't know why I'm so mean to Harry, but I can't help it! I'm sorry!<em>

_Review? I'll love you forever?_


	8. Letters

_Don't worry you guys! Draco is going to come back!_

_Just not in this chapter, because it is pretty much impossible for me to squeeze Harry's eleventh birthday/Diagon Alley/Platform 9 3/4 into one chapter. Because all that stuff is really important! In this story at least... Anyway, time to start living loosely by the book (for a little while at least.)  
><em>

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><p><strong>Chapter 8 - Letters<strong>_  
><em>

Harry wished he had a watch, because even though he was sure he'd been sitting in the dark for hours now, he had absolutely no idea whether it was enough hours for the Dursleys to have finally gone upstairs to bed. He picked a spider from his hair, still just as stubbornly messy as ever, and sighed heavily.

He didn't even know how it had happened, or whether he had anything to do with it at all. It wasn't like he possibly had the ability to make things just vanish like that. So how could that possibly be his fault at all? So what if he was talking to a snake, it's not like strange things didn't happen like that often, and he did have a pretty broad imagination.

Of course the Dursleys didn't believe in anything even remotely out of the ordinary. Like Dragons, or the flying motorbikes that kept cropping up in his dreams of late. They had always taken things so literally, as though anything that Harry thought up was some new kind of filthy word.

Because there is no such thing as magic.

Harry sat up in his bed, reaching blindly for the light switch before his little cupboard was flooded with light. He blinked as his eyes adjusted, before turning to stare blankly at his wall. It had been bare for quite some time now, with the exception of the faded pencil drawing that smiled weakly up at him. He looked away quickly.

His stomach gave a particularly uncomfortable growl, and Harry finally decided that it was worth the risk of being caught outside his cupboard. After all, he was starving.

He crept to the kitchen, his ears straining in the silence for any hint that his Aunt or Uncle could still be awake. He poked his head around the corner, and let out the breath he didn't he'd been holding. Glancing at that ugly clock on the wall to try and figure out just how long he had been sitting in his cupboard, reading a quarter past eleven with a sigh. Aunt Petunia would have finished her nightly scrub of the kitchen a good fifteen minutes ago.

He walked quietly over to the pantry, pulling out a half emptied packet of biscuits before quickly sneaking back to his cupboard to eat, a triumphant smile on his face. His Aunt and Uncle had locked him in his cupboard without food enough for him to be an expert at stealing bits and pieces from the kitchen when the Dursleys were either asleep or out at one of the many functions they were usually attending nowadays.

Harry was always left at home on those occasions, of course. Dudley hated having Harry anywhere near him, and would often cry hysterically if his parents even considered taking Harry anywhere. His Aunt and Uncle just assumed it was because Harry was just a generally horrible child, not even thinking about why Dudley as always so persistent to have Harry stay as far from him as possible.

Harry, of course, knew perfectly well, as did all the children who had finished the school year with the pair of them.

It was the week after the Christmas holidays, and Dudley had been itching to lay into his cousin for the entire time they had away from school, of course he had never had the chance, spending the majority of the time keeping up his perfect child charade to make Harry look bad in front of Aunt Marge and his parents. It had worked rather well, but it still wasn't as satisfying as the expression on Harry's face when Dudley landed a punch right on the nose.

He was sitting at a bench with his select group of cronies, laughing about some terrible joke that Piers had made. He was looking over at his cousin, sitting alone in the sandpit like he did every day, probably drawing those stupid pictures in the sand again. Dudley loved to step on Harry's drawings, it got such a satisfying reaction out of the scrawny boy.

"Hey guys, what say we go have a little fun with Pottyface?"

His friends laughed reluctantly, they didn't like the idea at all, because despite Dudley's stupid persistence to make the somewhat innocent looking boy's life a living hell, they all knew too well exactly what Harry was capable of, especially Piers. His hand still stung when he had been in the sun too long, the brilliant red patches shining where his skin had been scarred from his last attempt at hurting Harry, and that had been over a year ago.

Dudley stood up with an ugly smirk on his face, cracking his fat knuckles before heading off in the direction of his cousin. His gang followed uneasily behind him, keeping their distance from their bulky leader.

And then Harry looked up at his cousin, and everything seemed to stop.

Dudley stopped dead in his tracks, Harry's empty green eyes locked steadily on his cousin, his hands folded carefully in his lap and his lips curved into the slightest of frowns. An eery calm seemed to fall, and the moment stretched on forever. Harry stared at Dudley, and Dudley didn't so much as flinch.

And then he turned back to his friends, his eyes wide and his hands flying up to his throat. He looked as though he were choking, struggling to inhale at all, until he finally spoke.

Spoke?

It was more of a bark, actually, a high pitched yap. His friends stared at him incredulously as the other children in the playground began to notice. He barked again, over and over. People started to stare, but Dudley just kept on barking. Behind him, Harry laughed quietly to himself, before turning back to his friends in the sand.

The children all laughed. Dudley turned a deep shade of red, barking loudly like an angry chihuahua. His friends stared at him with horrified expressions on their faces, Dudley, King of the school, was making a complete fool out of himself.

Dudley ran.

That afternoon Dudley had run straight to his bedroom when he got home, coming down at dinner looking pale in the face and far more jumpy than usual. Harry would glance at him occasionally, to find Dudley watching him out of the corner of his eye. For the first time in all the years of knowing his cousin, Harry had never seen Dudley reject a plate of food. Of course, there is a first for everything.

He didn't speak a word to his parents that night, and only Harry knew why. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon had tried to pry some kind of speech out of their son, but he stayed tight lipped, eyes cast at the ground and his knees hugged to his chest.

His voice was back by morning. But Dudley had finally learned his lesson, and avoided Harry like the plague.

Harry finished off the stolen biscuits before sneaking back to the kitchen to drop the empty packet into the bin. Back in his cupboard, he watched the spiders on his ceiling like he did almost every night. Laying his head back against his pillow and huffing loudly to himself. He was going to be in this cupboard for a long while, he could already tell.

* * *

><p>As it turned out he was locked away in his cupboard for the longest he had ever been, spending the majority of the holidays cooped up inside the cupboard under the stairs. Not that he really had anywhere better to be. After all, the only friends Harry had could be drawn onto paper quite easily.<p>

Only problem was he didn't have any paper in his cupboard.

After two weeks he became so incredibly bored of his own imagination and watching the spiders rattle about whenever somebody mounted the stairs that he began digging around in his cupboard, fiddling with the small collection of toy soldiers he had collected from around the house whenever Dudley had dropped one or two in the hallway. He laid them all out in rows on the otherwise empty shelf.

They kept him entertained for a week.

Next he went looking underneath his bed. There wasn't anything particularly interesting under there, a tennis ball, a few big clumps of dust, and an old shoebox that had been pushed right into the corner. Harry picked up the tennis ball first, sending a cloud of dust into the confined space and nearly making him choke. The ball wasn't much use, if he threw it against the wall he was sure his uncle would strangle him.

He used it instead to roll around and knock over the lines of soldiers like dominoes. This lasted three days.

He went back to the underside of his bed. He didn't really think there was much entertainment value in dust bunnies, so he left them where they were, choosing instead to fish out the shoebox at the very back. He didn't even remember putting the box under there, let alone what he had put into it. He was sure this would entertain him for a good week or so.

As he lifted the lid to look inside, his eyes widened and his jaw dropped in shock. How had he possibly managed to forget about all of this? He ran his fingers tenderly over the quill that had fascinated him more than anything else he had ever seen. It was just as breathtaking as it had been on his ninth birthday, it's colours shimmering delicately in the dim light of his cupboard.

It was painful, how beautiful all the trinkets in this shoebox were, and Harry felt a lump rise in his throat, and his chest tighten around his lungs. He had tried to let himself to forget so hard, but the shattered heart that he had been so carefully piecing back together had always worn the scars of the loss of his friend. No goodbyes, no explanations.

Harry poured the contents carefully onto his bed, studying each of them with a neutral expression on his face. He didn't really know how he felt about all of this anymore, because even though his heart ached for Draco, his mind was iced with bitterness.

He spent three hours going over all of his forgotten possessions.

He spent the remaining three weeks of his punishment drawing with the present he had received on his ninth birthday.

* * *

><p>Harry stared into the bowl in the kitchen sink, a look of repulsion on his face. He had just been informed that it's contents, an assortment of greyish coloured rags, were to be his new school uniform. And the Dursleys actually complained about spending so much money on Harry? He sighed in resignation, before turning to glare at a pink faced Dudley waddling around the kitchen in his brand new Smeltings uniform.<p>

How on Earth was he supposed to make any friends at his new school with a uniform that would fit him like a potato sack? He'd gone his entire life without anyone to call a friend, with the exception of Draco, but even he seemed to have turned his back on Harry, just like everybody else, and there was no way that Harry would make his entire high school career with only Lily and James and Sirius to talk to... He was already going stir crazy as it was.

He heard the mail clink through the front door.

"Get the post, Dudley" Came Uncle Vernon's voice from behind the morning paper.

"Make Harry get it."

"Get the post, boy"

Harry shuffled from the room, it wasn't even worth arguing. He picked up the small pile of letters from the doormat, flicking through them halfheartedly. A postcard from Aunt Marge who was holidaying at the moment, a boring brown envelope that looked very much like a bill, and-

_Mr H Potter  
>The Cupboard under the Stairs<br>4 Privet Drive  
>Little Whinging<br>Surrey_

Harry stared at it. There was no stamp, only the fine emerald green writing on it's front. He turned it over with shaking fingers to stare at the purple wax seal, bearing an intricate coat of arms with an ornate letter 'H' at it's centre. He gulped, who on Earth would write a letter to him?

_"_Hurry up, boy!" Harry groaned at the sound of his Uncles voice, turning and heading back toward the kitchen, still staring at the letter addressed to Mr H Potter. He handed the bill and the postcard to Uncle Vernon, before sitting down to examine his own mail more closely. He ignored the sound of his Uncle talking, and almost didn't hear Dudley.

_"_Dad!" He exclaimed suddenly, "Dad, Harry's got something!"

The envelope was yanked from his hands, half opened, before he even had the chance to react_._

* * *

><p>Hundreds of letters later, Harry found himself curled up on the softest patch of ground he could find, in the middle of a storm, in a hut. On a rock. He didn't even bother attempting to sleep, instead filling his mind with thoughts of who on Earth would want to reach Harry so badly that they would go out of their way to send him piles of letters, and drive his Uncle to the very brink of insanity.<p>

The wind howled all around the rickety shack, the walls groaning and the windows rattling violently. What a way to turn eleven.

Harry turned over in an attempt to get more comfortable, tracing his eyes to the lighted dial of the wristwatch wrapped around Dudley's fat wrist, dangling from the sofa. Ten more minutes until he turned eleven.

At five minutes Harry started to hear strange noises on the rocks outside, the slap of footsteps? No, that would be impossible. The crunch of rock on rock, was it crumbling into the sea? Possibly... One minute

Thirty seconds...ten...five. The numbers ticked over to twelve, and Harry flew bolt upright, his eyes wide as he stared at the flimsy door. Somebody was knocking. Very, very loudly.

* * *

><p><em>We all know what happens next of course, but I really want to do the "You're a wizard, Harry." speech a little justice, so I'm leaving it at this. Review and let me know if I'm doing this story justice! I'm kind of scared that I'm losing it :S<br>_


	9. Keeper

_I was scared to write this chapter._

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><p><strong>Chapter 9 - Keeper<strong>

He heard his Uncle come skidding into the room behind him, heard Dudley starting awake and mumbling something to do with cannons, but his eyes never left the flimsy front door. That was the only thing separating him from the horrid rainstorm outside, the crashing of the sea, and whatever was bashing against the wood to get in.

BOOM!

The entire hut rattled around him, and Dudley's pitch rose to a girly squeak. In any other circumstance, it would have been hilarious. But not now. Because whatever was knocking did not sound like it was at all friendly.

SMASH!

The door was hit so hard this time, that it flew completely from it's hinges, crashing heavily to the dirty floor and leaving in it's wake a gaping hole, through which Harry could see the ocean raging, rain pouring, and the silhouette of a man who looked larger than any person Harry had ever seen. He had a face obscured beneath an mane of hair and beard, his eyes glinting brightly amidst the tangle.

He squeezed through the doorway, stooping to avoid putting his head through the wooden ceiling. He bent down, picked the door up from the floor, and pushed it easily back onto it's frame, as though breaking down doors was quite a regular occurrence, and the sound of the raging storm outside was muffled the slightest bit. He turned to look at the room.

"Couldn't make us a cup o' tea, could yeh? It's not been an easy journey..." He walked hunched-backed towards the sofa where a pale looking Dudley sat, frozen in fear, staring at the huge man that had just broken down the front door. "Budge up, yeh great lump."

Harry almost laughed as a still-squeaking Dudley ran from the sofa to hide behind Aunt Petunia, who had not ventured much further than the bedroom door, her eyes wide and her boney fingers clutching at the door frame for support. Uncle Vernon stood in front of her, Shotgun pointed in shaking hands at the stranger.

"An' here's Harry!" He felt his eyes flick away from his terrified relatives, looking back at the man who had now made himself comfortable on the abandoned couch. Harry would have found him absolutely terrifying, if it weren't for the fact that his eyes were crinkled into what looked like a genuine smile.

"Las' time I saw you, you was only a baby," wait. This giant knows him? "Yeh look a lot like yer dad, but yeh've got yer mum's eyes."

Harry didn't expect the words to affect him as much as they did, he didn't expect the hot feeling welling up inside of him, or the slight sting of tears in his eyes at the words. Nobody had ever uttered a word about what Harry's parents had been like. He didn't even have a photograph of them. He had always tried of course, to get something at least out of his reluctant Aunt and Uncle. It had never worked.

"I demand that you leave at once, sir!" Uncle Vernon's voice snapped Harry back to himself. "You are breaking and entering!" Harry could swear he could hear a quiver of fear in his Uncle's voice, much like the occasions when he upset Harry when Draco had been around, Harry's eyes seemed to scare a lot of people when Draco had been there for him, just a short walk away.

"Ah, shut up, Dursley, yeh great prune." with that, the giant jerked the gun from Uncle Vernon's shaking hands, bent it into a knot, and tossed it into the far corner of the room. Harry definitely liked this strange man. "Anyway - Harry," he turned back to face Harry, who was now standing a good six feet from the man, "a very happy birthday to yeh. Got summat for yeh here - I mighta sat on it at some point, but it'll taste all right."

With that, the giant produced a slightly squashed box from the inside of his bulky coat, handing it to Harry with another eye crinkling smile. Harry opened it with trembling fingers, to reveal a large, sticky chocolate cake with the words _Happy Birthday Harry_ written onto it in brilliant green icing. He felt like he stared at the cake for hours.

He had only ever been given one other birthday cake that he could remember, and that had been on his eighth birthday, when Draco had turned up in the park with two cupcakes, one with a thin self lighting candle poking out of the top of it. Harry had been so fascinated by that candle, and he was sure that he would never forget the wonderful feeling in his tummy when the flame snapped into life with a gentle click of his fingers.

He should say thank you.

"Who are you?" Harry internally berated himself. That was about as far from 'thank you' as he could get! The giant chuckled.

"True, I haven't introduced meself. Rubeus Hagrid, keeper of keys and grounds at Hogwarts."He shook Harry's arm enthusiastically. Harry didn't even notice the force of the gesture, because his mind was whirring again. He had heard of Hogwarts before, but he couldn't remember where.

Harry didn't notice Hagrid start talking, and it wasn't until a fire was suddenly crackling happily in the previously empty grate of the fireplace that he came back to himself.

The warmth soaked into his skin immediately, like a hot bath, and light filled the dank little hut. The giant - Hagrid, then went about emptying his pockets of a great collection of things. A kettle, mugs, teabags, even sausages, along with several other bits and pieces, working in silence as Harry and the Dursleys watched him.

Nobody spoke until Hagrid was sliding six slightly burned sausages from a poker that had come from one of those pockets. Dudley fidgeted at the sight, his eyes hungry. Uncle Vernon didn't fail to notice. "Don't touch anything he gives you, Dudley." he said sharply.

The giant actually laughed at this. "Yer great puddin' of a son don' need fattenin' anymore Dursley, don' worry." Suddenly the sausages were being handed to Harry, placed into his hands on a small ceramic plate, he was so hungry that he didn't even manage to mess up his thank you this time, wolfing down the food in front of him with far too much enthusiasm. He watched the giant as he ate, waiting for some kind of an explanation.

He wanted to know where he had heard about Hogwarts, whatever that was supposed to be. He wanted to know why the giant named Hagrid had sought Harry out to a point where he found him, in a hut on a rock in the middle of a storm.

"I'm sorry, but I still don't really know who you are."

The giant put his bucket-sized teacup down on the dirty floor and turned his beetle black eyes to Harry. "Call me Hagrid," he said, "everyone does. An' like I told yeh, I'm keeper of keys at Hogwarts - yeh'll know all about Hogwarts o' course."

"I've... heard of it, but I still don't know what it is." said Harry. He barely heard Aunt Petunia gasp in the corner.

Hagrid looked shocked.

"Sorry." Harry apologized quickly.

"_Sorry?_" Hagrid stared at Harry with wide eyes, before narrowing them dangerously and turned on the Dursleys, still huddled in the corner. "It's them as should be sorry! I knew you weren't gettin' yer letters, but not even knowing what Hogwarts is! Fer cryin' out loud, did yeh never wonder where yer parents learned it all?'

Harry stared at the man, what on Earth was he talking about? "All what?"

"ALL WHAT?" Hagrid thundered, and suddenly Harry was back to being as frightened as he was when this giant man had barged through the front door. "Now wait jus' one second!"

He climbed to his feet, and turned on the Dursleys, a murderous expression on his wild, hairy face. They cowered even further into the wall, their faces white and eyes wide.

"Do you mean ter tell me," he growled dangerously at the Dursleys, "that this boy - this boy! - knows nothin' abou' - abou' ANYTHING?"

Now hang on a second, Harry knew plenty of things! He went to school, and his grades weren't as shocking as they could be, especially considering school was far from Harry's favourite place in the world. Wait...that's it.

_"So where are you going to school when you turn eleven, then?" Harry flopped his messy head of hair to one side, staring at Draco, who was picking at his shoelaces._

_"Oh, the same place everybody like us goes, Harry!" His face had lit up like a lamp, his eyes twinkling. "Hogwarts, of course."_

_Harry giggled at his friends enthusiasm, what kind of a silly name was Hogwarts?_

"It's a school." Harry breathed just loud enough for himself to hear. "For people like me and Draco..."

But what were they? What made them so special that their was a school built for people 'like them?' Was Harry crazy? He turned his gaze to Hagrid, who still seemed to be screaming at the Dursleys.

"About what?" he asked gently, trying to make sense of it all inside his head. Hagrid turned to face him again, looking frustrated.

"About _our _world! _Your _world!_ My_ world! _Yer parents' world!_"

"What world?" Harry stared at Hagrid, who suddenly looked as though he were going to explode.

"DURSLEY!" he boomed. Uncle Vernon looked as though he had swallowed something particularly sickening, and simply blubbered under Hagrid's vicious gaze. Hagrid turned back to Harry in disbelief. "But yeh must know abou' yer mum an' dad?" he said. "I mean, they're _famous. You're_ famous."

What on Earth was he on about? Harry was about as far from famous as anybody could get. He glanced at his Aunt and Uncle, who had somehow managed to get even whiter. "My - my mum and dad weren't famous, were they?"

Hagrid began to mutter to himself, running his hands through his tangled hair as though trying to put a stopper on his rage. He stared at Harry with a bewildered expression. "Yeh don' know what yeh _are_?" he said at last.

All of a sudden, Uncle Vernon seemed to find his obnoxious confidence, "STOP! I FORBID YOU!" he yelled at an angry looking Hagrid, who stared at the man furiously.

Aunt Petunia gasped again, her face horrified and arms wrapped around a wide eyed Dudley.

"Ah, go boil yer heads, both of yeh," Hagrid turned to Harry, "Harry - Yer a wizard."

It was as though all the air and warmth was sucked from the hut, and Harry was being dropped into the icy ocean that slapped at the rocks outside. "I'm a _what_?"

"A wizard o' course."

Suddenly everything clicked right into place. The reason Harry could make all the strange things happen around him, why his friends in the sand moved, why Dudley's hands had burned when he tried to touch him that time. But - that meant Draco was a wizard too. Why had he never said anything about it when they were playing?

Because he thought Harry knew.

* * *

><p>Harry stared at his letter, reading it through several times as Hagrid argued viciously with his Aunt and Uncle. They had known this entire time, and yet they had refused to show any kind of inclination that magic was real. Harry felt angry at himself for even letting himself believe them for a minute. They had lied about much more than just the existence of magic of course.<p>

Like how Harry's parents had really died.

He flipped over the envelope and ran his fingers over the purple wax seal, the prominent 'H' at it's centre glowing in the light of the fire. Magic was real, Hogwarts was real, and he really was as special as he had let himself believe. His parents had been killed by a man named Voldemort, and he had tried to kill Harry.

He squeezed his eyes shut, concentrating hard on the single memory had had of his one year old self. A flash of brilliant green light spread across his vision as it had so many times before. There was no car crash, there was only magic.

Hagrid made a very sudden movement beside him, and Harry dragged his eyes from the letter to see the giant man pointing a flowery pink umbrella straight into a frightened Uncle Vernon's face like a sword. "If he wants ter go, a great muggle like you won' stop him." Harry smiled at the term he had heard Draco use so many times with respect to his Aunt and Uncle.

_"Stupid muggles, they're just jealous of you." Draco grumbled as he tossed a tennis ball into the air, glancing over at Harry. "I really don't know how you put up with them Harry."_

_"I don't really have a choice, Draco. What does that mean anyway, muggle, I mean."_

_Draco stared at him incredulously, letting the tennis ball fall with a soft thud onto the grass. "What does - You don't -" He sighed. "Muggles are people who aren't like us, Harry. They're not... Special, like us."_

So they weren't like Harry or Draco. They weren't wizards, they weren't magic.

_"_Huh..." Harry's face quirked into a lopsided smile_, _and he raised his eyes to the Dursleys, still cowering in the corner under Hagrid's withering gaze. "Muggles..." He whispered. And then all of a sudden he was laughing, deep in his stomach. It bubbled out of his mouth loudly, happy and genuine, and it felt as though he had never laughed like this in his entire life. He laughed and laughed until his ribs began to ache and he could hardly breathe, wiping the tears away from his eyes and staring up at a surprised looking Hagrid.

"Alrigh' there, Harry?" he asked carefully, bushy eyebrows knitted together in concern.

"Never felt better!" Harry giggled, clutching his Hogwarts letter to his chest.

* * *

><p>Harry stared at the tiny little pub as Hagrid mounted the stairs, opening the door wide and waiting for Harry to pass. It wasn't even the slightest bit magical looking, in fact, it barely even looked as though it were inhabited by anybody at all. The walls were dirty, and the little sign hanging over the door was only barely readable, it's golden letters peeling away from the wood.<p>

"The leaky Cauldron," Harry muttered to himself, following reluctantly after Hagrid into the dank pub. There were a few women sitting in the far corner, drinking small glasses of sherry, a little man in a top hat speaking quietly to the old barman, and several other nattering people talking animatedly over their glasses.

The pub went quiet so suddenly, that Harry stopped dead in his tracks. Why on Earth were they all staring?

"Good Lord," said the old barman, gaping at Harry as though he had two heads, "is this - can this be - ?"

Everyone seemed to be holding their breath, and it made Harry's insides squirm.

"Bless my soul, Harry Potter... what an honour." Suddenly the barman was running from behind the counter, straight towards Harry, who was shocked into silence, grabbing his hand and shaking it, tears in his eyes. "Welcome back, Mr Potter, welcome back."

Every chair in the pub suddenly scraped back, and Harry was consumed in a sea of people he didn't even know. Everyone wanted to shake his hands, to gawp at him and introduce themselves.

It was several minutes later that Hagrid finally pulled Harry from the throng, having met Doris Crockford several times over, Dedalus Diggle, a man of whom had bowed to Harry while grocery shopping with his Aunt once, and Professor Quirrell, a timid man who would be teaching him at Hogwarts.

Hagrid led Harry out of the bar, which was now buzzing with excited chatter, and into a small walled courtyard, where there was nothing but a dustbin and a few weeds.

"Told yeh didn' I? You're famous!" Hagrid gave Harry an eye crinkling grin and turned his attention back to the empty wall in front of him.

Harry really wasn't sure if he liked being famous. It felt strangely like everybody seemed to know more about him than he did, and that was only from ten minutes in the Leaky Cauldron. It was almost as though the world just didn't want him to fit in at all, one way or another, he would always end up an outsider. He didn't like that idea at all.

* * *

><p>After a rather adventurous ride through Gringotts that had resulted in a rather pale looking Hagrid and a heavy pocketed Harry, he finally had the chance to enjoy Diagon Alley in all it's glory. At least he would, once his eyes adjusted to the glaring sunlight again.<p>

"Might as well get yer uniform," Hagrid said, pointing towards _Madam Malkin's Robes For All Occasions,_ "listen, Harry. Would yeh mind if I slipped off fer a pick-me-up in the Leaky Cauldron? I hate them Gringotts carts."

Harry nodded and parted ways with Hagrid, heading toward the little robe shop as his cimpanion was swallowed by the crowd. His fingers were just about to clutch the door handle, when something caught his eye. He stopped in his tracks, and stared at the little shop next door with wide eyes. It's windows were filled with exquisite looking quills, bottles of ink, and brightly coloured sticks of wax. It was beautiful.

He took one last glance at _Madam Malkin's_ before turning towards the quill shop, only five minutes, he told himself.

A little bell tinkled as he entered the shop, and the dark haired man at the counter looked up from his work with a dazzling smile, "Hello there, sir, is there anything in particular I can help you with?" Harry stared at him for a moment, thinking hard. Why was he here? Did he really need anything?

"I'm looking for pencils," he blurted before he could stop himself, "for drawing..."

The man smiled at him again, before moving to one of the many shelves that lined the walls, each one filled with neat little rows of different feathered quills, scrolls of parchment, and other bits and pieces. Harry definitely liked this shop, it reminded him of the present Draco had given him, now hiding in the shoebox in his cupboard.

"I think these may be what you're looking for."

Ten minutes later, Harry walked out of the Quill shop with a smile on his face and a small paper bag in his hands. The salesman had found everything Harry wanted, wrapping them neatly and smiling happily as the scrawny boy walked out the door. Harry turned back towards Madam Malkin's, taking a few keen steps in it's direction before stopping dead.

It felt as though all the air was sucked from his lungs. He watched in silence as the woman with the long blonde hair and a sallow face walked from the robe shop, followed by a small, equally blonde boy, with eyes that Harry would never forget.

Draco walked away without even looking in his direction, and Harry suddenly felt very ill.

* * *

><p><em>This chapter was impossible, seriously. I struggled with it. Let me know if I did okay?<em>


	10. Express

_So I should probably fill you all in on what the deal is with my absence. So here goes._

_One of my friends was in a car accident, he's paralysed down his left hand side, broke both his femurs and can't breathe on his own. He's stable, but he'll never be the same._

_One of my sister's friends was in a car accident, too. She wasn't so lucky. The funeral was last Friday._

_Anyway, enough of my whining, here's Chapter Ten. Be kind._

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 10 - Express<strong>

The weeks leading up to September first are spent in solitude, and even though he wasn't locked away in his cupboard under the stairs anymore, he still felt overly depressed about the whole situation.

The Dursleys are ignoring his existence now, Dudley cowers when he enters a room, but his Aunt and Uncle don't even bristle about how terrible his hair has been looking anymore.

He spends his time gazing out of his very own window in his new bedroom, watching the neighbours go about their business from day to day and allowing his mind to drift to Dragons, and Hogwarts, and the beautiful snowy owl sleeping in her cage on his desk.

She reminded him so much of Draco that sometimes it hurt to look at her.

When he wasn't watching Mrs Figg crutching after one of her many cats, or Mr Malogne meticulously pruning his hedges for hours at a time, he would lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling and sighing much more than necessary. He just couldn't shake the glimpse of Draco in Diagon Alley, the lurching in his stomach, and the headache that seemed to have taken up residence just behind his eyes.

He had looked so different from how Harry remembered him, and it was strange.

It was like all the light had left his grey eyes, and the carefree aura that floated around him had dissolved, his haired pulled back neatly away from his pale forehead and his eyebrows drawn down into the smallest frown. He didn't look like himself at all.

Harry had considered chasing after him, of course, but it was almost like his feet were betraying him, holding him in place until the spark in his eyes faded back into a flat, dark shade of green.

He had wandered the Alley on autopilot, had chosen out Hedwig, with the image of white hair and pale skin gnawing away at him. This was silly. Draco didn't even want him anymore, that's why he left, and that's why he didn't even look at him in Diagon Alley.

* * *

><p>Days turned into nights and back into days in no time at all, and before Harry knew what was happening, August was drawing to a close. He spent hours packing and unpacking his trunk, flicked through his textbooks in an effort to procrastinate, and finally managed to fall into a fitful sleep on the thirty first.<p>

* * *

><p>Platform nine and three quarters is definitely one of the most chaotic train platforms Harry has ever seen.<p>

The shining red steam engine fills the platform with a warm, heavy mist, animals squawk and hiss and there are people everywhere, dressed in sweeping velvet cloaks and strangely patterned hats. Mothers fuss over their children, fathers thump each other on the back in greeting and everywhere, students are squealing excitedly at the sight of their friends.

Harry doesn't have a mother to fuss, or a friend to squeal over. Instead, he bundles himself into one of the carriages with the help of a pair of redheaded twins, who gaped at his scar excitedly before disappearing into the crowd. Strange. He finds himself a nice quiet compartment to sit in while families outside say their goodbyes.

The Dursleys had dumped him at the entrance, cackling gleefully at his confusion, _'Platform Nine and Three Quarters, eh? Good luck finding that!'_

He made a mental note to figure out who the family was that had helped him through the wall in the end, though he doubted it would be hard, with hair like that.

While he waited for the final whistle, he turned absently to a curious looking Hedwig, her head tilted slightly to the side as she watched him bite at his fingernails, rummage about in his pockets for a while, and then finally produce a bag of owl treats.

He ignored the collective thudding as students clambered onto the train and the station outside his window being engulfed by a cloud of thick white steam, choosing instead to wedge the treats into the wire of Hedwig's cage and watch her eye them suspiciously.

Only when the door to his compartment clattered open did he look away from her, hearing the cling as she snapped the treat away and rolling his eyes to himself. In the doorway, a rather uncomfortable looking redheaded boy shifted from one foot to the other, the tips of his ears glowing slightly pink and his eyes trained on the floor.

"Anyone sitting there?" He pointed to the seat opposite Harry and raised his eyes carefully. "Everywhere else is full."

Harry shook his head, watching as the boy pushed his trunk into the overhead rack and plopped himself down onto the chair opposite and staring pointedly out of the window. The train was moving now.

"Are you really Harry Potter?" the boy asked suddenly, glancing at Harry before turning an impressive shade of scarlet. He's awful nervous about this whole thing, but then again, so is Harry. He's never had a conversation with anybody his age that hadn't wanted to beat him up, with the exception of Draco, and it's strange. Nice, though.

"Yeah, I am," he manages a half smile at the boy opposite him,whose eyes widen in shock.

"Oh - well, I thought it might be one of Fred and George's jokes," He scrubs at his hair, before looking back at his feet, as though gathering all of his courage, "Have you really got - you know..."

He pointed at Harry's forehead.

Harry pulled back his fringe carefully, he wasn't used to all of this fuss over his scar, and it was odd having people constantly asking about it.

"What's your name, anyway?" he asked, dropping his hair back into his eyes and attempting to flatten it with his palms. Useless, of course.

"Oh, I'm Ron," he smiled, his shoulders relaxing instantly, "Ron Weasley."

Ron Weasley, as it turns out, is one of the friendliest people Harry has ever met, and they talk for so long that Harry doesn't even notice the countryside rolling past the train until the lunch trolley clatters up to their door and the pair of them buy two of everything.

Ron comes from a very old wizarding family, and while Harry found everything even remotely magical fascinating, Ron seemed to take great interest in all 'the muggle things' that Harry had grown up with.

Harry didn't mind much, after all, this was the most conversation he'd had in years.

He didn't tell Ron that.

It wasn't until a very huffy Hermione Granger had stalked from the compartment with her nose in the air a few hours later that the conversation steered away from how many Chocolate Frog Cards Ron had collected.

"She's mad, that one, I'm telling you," Ron glanced between the now vacant doorway and a confused looking Harry, who was trying to decide whether he wanted to laugh, or sit there in shocked silence for a few more minutes.

Hermione Granger certainly was intense.

She seemed to know more about Harry than he did, and for somebody who had been raised just the same as he had... well, maybe without the whole getting-beaten-up-every-other-day thing, she certainly knew a lot about Hogwarts, and the houses that Harry hadn't even thought about.

He didn't feel so good anymore.

"Whatever house I'm in, I hope she's not in it," said Ron, throwing his wand down next to him and picking up the pumpkin pastie he had been eyeing.

"What house are your brothers in?" Harry asked, wrinkling his nose as Ron tore a great hunk of pastie off, chewing once or twice before he answered in a spray of crumbs.

"Gryffindor," he said, staring hard at his pastie, "Mum and dad were in it, too. I don't know what they'll say if I'm not. I don't suppose Ravenclaw _would _be too bad, but imagine if they put me in Slytherin!"

Harry grimaced slightly at that, having already had Hagrid explain Slytherin's rather poor reputation after a numb day of shopping, he'd rather not consider it an option. He didn't want to be like Voldemort. Just, no.

Ron flopped back onto his seat looking depressed, stuffing the last of the pastie into his mouth and gazing blankly at the ceiling.

"So what do your other brothers do then? Now they're out of school." Harry quirks an eyebrow and almost smiles when Ron actually finishes chewing his food before talking.

"Charlie's in Romania studying Dragons," Ron flicked crumbs from his chin and completely missed Harry's sharp gasp, "And Bill's in Egypt, doing something for Gringotts."

"Wow... what kind of Dragons?" Harry leaned forward in his chair, resting elbows on knees and watching Ron carefully. He hadn't talked to anybody about Dragon's in so long. Especially not when he had figured out they were real.

"Oh, he works with all the breeds, he's got a fair few Welsh Green's to take care of, but they're no fun."

"What do you mean, no fun? They're _Dragons_." Harry stared at him incredulously.

Ron blinked at him, his mouth curling into a lopsided grin, "you really did grow up in the muggle world didn't you?" his eyes sparkle and Harry feels the gentle heat of embarrassment in his cheeks.

"I did, yes, but I still know a bit about some stuff," Harry stared at his feet, scuffing at the odd crimson carpet.

"How did you know stuff though? Who told you?"

The question seemed perfectly innocent, but it made Harry's heart constrict in his chest and tears burn inside his eyes. "A boy I met at the park one day, he told me heaps of things, I just didn't realise they were true at the time."

"What's his name, then?" Ron scratched at the dirt on his nose as he spoke, "Maybe he's on the train."

Harry doesn't get a chance to answer.

The door to the compartment clatters open again just as the little overhead lamps flickered to life.

Harry closed his eyes and waited for Hermione Granger to start nagging them again, "Is it true that Harry Potter's in this carriage?"

His blood ran cold as the voice curled around his insides, it was different, colder, but still very much Draco.

His eyes flicked open as he turned to look at the boy, his white hair still swept away from his face and his pretty silver eyes seemed to be more of a steely grey colour. Harry watched the small wrinkling of his nose as Draco's eyes raked over Ron, who looked extremely uncomfortable, before he finally turned to look Harry straight in the eye.

It looked as though somebody had dropped a bucket of extremely cold water of the other boys head, his eyes widening in shock and his hands gripping tighter to the compartment door as though he might just fall over if he let go.

"Yeah, it's true," Harry mumbled, staring for a second more before turning to look out the window. His heart was doing stupid things in his chest and it was really beginning to hurt.

It was silent for a long time, before Ron finally gave in to the tension.

"Do you know him, Harry?"

"You could say that," Harry glanced over at Ron before turning his attention back to the paddocks whizzing past outside. He really didn't want Draco to be here right now, it felt strange, and he really had no idea what to even say.

"We're friends," Draco says, and it feels like all the coldness has drained out of his voice.

His snaps up his head to stare at the boy, still fighting down the tears and trying desperately to keep his lip from trembling, "were friends," he corrects softly.

"Oh!" Ron cries abruptly, "I get it! _He's _the one who told you about the dragons."

"Something like that," Harry cleared his throat, smiling briefly at Ron before turning back to Draco, "What can we do for you, Draco?"

Ron snorts. Harry watches Draco's eyes narrow and the cold tone return to his words, "Think my names funny, do you?" he spits, glaring hard at Ron, "no need to ask you yours, red hair, and a hand-me-down robe. You must be a Weasley."

Ron flushed the most violent shade of crimson Harry has ever seen.

"Don't talk to him like that," Harry muttered, feeling his stomach twist itself in knots inside him.

"Why not, then?" Draco asked coldly, his voice sharp and pointy, jabbing into Harry painfully, "It's not as though he'd treat me any better, laughing at my name, how rude."

Harry didn't say anything, choosing instead to stare mutely between an offended looking Draco and a glowing red Ron. Students laughed in the background and the train continued to rattle around them.

"That's what I thought," Draco huffs after a strained minutes silence, "Anyway, I was going to ask whether you wanted to come sit in my compartment," suddenly Draco sounded just like the five year old in the park, and all the blood ran out of Harry's face, "But since I'm not your friend anymore, I guess... I'll just... Go."

The hurt in Draco's eyes is the last thing Harry sees before the compartment door slams shut.

* * *

><p>"There wasn't a witch or wizard who went bad that wasn't in Slytherin," Ron whispers into Harry's ear, watching as Vincent Crabbe waddles over to the green clad table looking smug.<p>

The sorting ceremony was well under way now, and Harry's legs were feeling more nd more boneless as each name was called.

"Granger, Hermione," Professor McGonagall called, and the small, bushy haired girl from the train steps up to the stool, looking particularly pale.

"GRYFFINDOR!"

Ron groaned darkly beside him, the crimson table erupting in applause as Hermione trotted over to join them. Harry barely even noticed, his eyes still staring directly at the white blonde hair three people in front of him, and frowning slightly to himself. Dracp had said they were still friends. He still wanted to be Harry's friend.

But he was different, and that scared Harry even more than the idea of being sorted.

He followed the blonde head as it climbed the stairs and sat on the little three legged stool, watched unblinkingly as the hat was dropped onto his hair, one, two, three, four, five seconds.

"SLYTHERIN!"

His hands smoothed the fabric of his robes compulsively, watched as Draco walked over to the Slytherin table, a smile on his face as he sat himself down next to Gregory Goyle.

Harry doesn't see Draco's eyes on him when the hat blocks out his vision, he misses the way Draco's knuckles glow white on the tabletop as he cranes his neck to see him, and he completely misses the anguish in his expression when the hat sorts him into Gryffindor.

They lock eyes for barely a moment across the hall when the puddings vanish, and the familiar flare of silver seems the spark in Draco's eyes.

Harry misses him, even if he's too stubborn to tell him so.

* * *

><p><em>I'll probably make some changes to this later, but it's been too long.<em>

_Thanks for the patience guys. x  
><em>


	11. Study

_Thanks to Everybody who sent their love, my friend is getting feeling back now, and he's starting to talk. Progress is slow but promising._

_**I seem to be having a very bad luck streak of late, with everything going on I managed to have a rather unwelcome meeting between the ground and my head and am currently recovering from a rather nasty concussion. God Bless Panadiene!**  
><em>

_Now that I've gotten past that rather icky chapter, I can get onto the fun stuff. A lot of you have told me that Draco-chasing-Harry is super cliche, so don't worry, this was always going to be a Harry-chase-Draco kind of story. I wrote this chapter to the sound of Maroon 5, it was indeed distracting as all hell, but it cheered me up enough to make Harry get off his butt and stop moping.  
><em>

* * *

><p><strong>Chapter 11 -Study<strong>

Ron is a very good friend to Harry, and over the following weeks he seems to be the only person in the entire school that doesn't gape openly at him in the corridors, with the exception of Draco of course, who seems to have forgotten that Harry even existed.

Harry spends every lesson with the Slytherin students glancing furiously between his books and the blonde head staring resolutely forward on the opposite side of the room, hoping desperately to catch him off guard. It never happens.

Ron does his best to distract Harry at the table in the Great Hall, sitting directly in the way of Harry's view of the Slytherin table, teaching him all about the rules of quidditch and interrogating Harry as to just what muggles are like. Harry really doesn't think his opinion on the subject is very valuable, but he does his best.

By the third week of school, Harry is positive he's heard every possible way of being fouled in quidditch twice over, and tells Ron that he has a particularly nasty headache. He isn't really all that hungry anyway, and he really needs to at least make some kind of attempt at his potions essay.

He doesn't bother returning to the common room, hitching the same ratty schoolbag from his old school higher on his shoulders and making the familiar trek up to the school's library. The corridors are empty, and his footsteps echo loudly from the walls and ceiling, the orange glow of sunlight filtering through the windows and catching on the tiny specks of dust the swirl around in the air.

He likes this place, it's pretty, and it feels safe. He just wishes it could feel like home.

Nothing feels like home.

The library is a grand room, with worn crimson carpet and high wooden bookshelves surrounding a central work area, filled with squashy chairs and thick hardwood tables. Everything smells like old parchment and leather.

It's just as quiet here as it was in the corridors, though Harry's steps are muffled now, so that the only sound reaching his ears is his own shallow breathing and the distant scratching of a quill.

Funny, he'd thought that everybody would be down in the Great Hall at this time. Even Madam Pince abandoned her books of an evening and trotted down to the Hall.

He padded his way down the little walkway between shelves, running his fingers over the thick spines of the books as he went, and rounds the corner carefully, poking his head out just far enough to spot the source of the scratching.

Draco isn't facing him, his head is bowed over a textbook as his hand continues scratching out messy notes on a long scroll of parchment resting next to it. His robes have been discarded, thrown over the back of the chair next to him, the cuffs of his white uniform shirt pushed up to his elbows and his hair breaking free ever so slightly from the sleekness Harry is growing used to now.

He doesn't know how long he stands there, staring at the back of his head, and it's only when he realises that he hasn't been breathing that he finally snaps out of his trance, ducking back behind the shelf and exhaling as quietly as he can.

What does he do now?

He wants nothing more than to sit at that table and demand answers from the other boy, slam his hand down on the wooden surface and shout as loud as he can, _why did you leave me? Why didn't you come back to me when I needed you? I thought you were my friend... why do I still love you..._

He huffs in frustration, pushing all those questions to the back of his mind and grabbing a random book off the shelf behind him. He stepped out from the shelter of the bookshelves and marched himself over to Draco's table, dropping the book down onto the table causing the blonde boy to flinch violently, glaring up at him coldly until he finally recognised Harry, his eyes widening in shock as Harry dropped onto one of the chairs.

"What are you doing?" he hissed, glancing around them for anybody snooping in the shelves.

"I'm sitting down," Harry whispered, scrubbing a hand through his hair and flushing gently. This was a stupid idea, he should have just left.

"I can see that," Draco stated bluntly, "why?"

"Do you want me to go?"

Draco hesitated. "I don't know," he dropped his quill down onto the parchment and rubbed his eyes, a few more strands of hair breaking away from their bonds and hanging down onto his face. Draco didn't seem too fond of them, batting them back roughly into place

Harry didn't watch the action, instead choosing to stare down at the quill now resting on Draco's rough scrawlings. The dim light of the library seemed to illuminate it, brilliant gold and green and blue flecks shimmering across the black surface of the feather, glinting up at him with sickening familiarity.

His own twin to this quill was tucked away in his bedside table, hidden underneath a small pile of galleons and his Hogwarts letter.

"You never told me you had one too," Harry whispered, pointing toward the neglected quill with interest.

"I didn't," Draco replied, resting his chin in his hand and studying Harry critically, "I had to help my mother with the garden for five months to save enough money for that present," He looked down at the tabletop, sighing gently, "Mother got me this one as a reward for getting into Slytherin, actually." He picked up the quill gingerly, watching as the light reflected from the little coloured flecks.

"She asked me what I wanted, and it was the first thing that came to mind. I really don't know why, considering you were so determined to believe that we're not friends anymore, but it did." He dropped it back onto the parchment, flicking a page over in his book and staring down at the writing in front of him.

This time it's Harry who looks as though he's had a bucket of iced water dropped over his head, his eyebrows knitted together and all the blood in his body running right away from his face, "I didn't think you wanted to be my friend..." he scrubs at his hair again, digging blunt fingernails into his scalp, "You left me."

"Do you really think I wanted to?" Draco spits, his cheeks flushing as he speaks, "Do you really think that I spent years walking to that bloody muggle park just because I wanted to ditch you when I needed you most?" he laughed, a broken, devastating laugh that made Harry's throat ache, "Do you think I sat in a garden, pruning bloody roses, getting thorns in my hands to buy you a bloody birthday present because I _didn't_ want to be your friend?"

He looked like he was going to cry, his silver eyes shining brightly and his lip trembling gently, "Draco, I..."

"No, Harry, no." He stood, slamming his book shut and stuffing his things back into his bag, "It's too late now, we can't be friends anymore."

"But, why?" He was standing too now, snatching his bag from the ground and waiting for Draco to make his escape.

"Because you're a Gryffindor, Harry," he whispered, "And I'm a Slytherin. We can't be friends anymore."

"But, what - why does it matter?"

"You have so much to learn, Harry. So, so much to learn."

And then he was gone, and Harry couldn't bring himself to follow after him.

* * *

><p><em>It's very short, but there really isn't anything else I want to add to it. Plus I feel the need to make up for lost time.<em>


	12. Pride

_I got the feeling that I've lost my touch with this story, so I've decided to give it a Happy-injection. I think that Harry/Hermione conversations are my favourite to write, probably because I talk like Hermione in the real world (Just with my amazing Australian accent)_

_The happy-injection continues on into my own life, my friend is doing wonderfully, as far as recovery goes, and I taught Chuckie (my dog) how to fetch the newspaper. I also got told by four or so people in the last week that I look like Audrey Hepburn. Fabulous. Now to eat bagels with elbow length satin gloved fingers.  
><em>

_My updating habits are disgustingly disorganised. Honestly I don't even know what I'm doing anymore. For those of you that are interested, I posted another chapter of Fahrenheit the other day, for those of you who aren't interested, I picked the coolest flower ever today._

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><p><strong>Chapter 12 - Pride<br>**

Harry doesn't move for several minutes, staring at the empty doorway and wringing his hands together. He doesn't know what to do.

"I don't know why it has to be like that," Harry jumped violently at the voice, twisting around to see Hermione Granger clutching at a heavy looking pile of books. He groaned to himself, this couldn't be good. "Slytherins and Gryffindors, I mean."

Harry turned back to his own table, dropping his bag back at his feet at sighing heavily. Hermione seemed to take it as an invitation to sit down, and takes up residence in Draco's vacant seat in a flash, dropping her books with a dull thunk onto the table and studying Harry closely.

"I didn't mean to pry, I was in one of the back shelves, and you two were talking rather loudly," she says, flipping open the topmost book and scanning the contents.

"We were whispering, how is that loud?"

Hermione smiled at him, a sad, you-don't-know-anything kind of smile, and he hates it. "You don't come in here very often, do you?" she laughed, shaking her head and looking back down at her book.

"Should I?" Harry asked quietly. He wasn't really looking for an answer, and turned his attention instead to the book he had pulled randomly from the shelf. He could hear Hermione ranting about the importance of good study habits but he didn't bother with listening to any of it. People often talked at him, and he had gotten quite good at just switching off in the last few years.

The book is entitled; _The Dragon's Tail, Living with the Untamed _by Jarod Baroski, it looks particularly dry, bound in bashed up brown leather that looks about a hundred years old. Harry flicked through some of the pages, eying the dense writing and complicated diagrams carefully before deciding that it would be best not to read it.

"... and you heard Professor McGonagall the other day, the exams are based off of work from our very first day through to the very last, so if we don't start early then we have no hope of passing anything." Hermione stops for breath, and Harry blinks at her.

"Do you really think Slytherins and Gryffindors can be friends?" he blurts, shuffling in his seat and watching Hermione expectantly.

She's somewhat caught off guard by the sudden change of subject, and frowned for a moment before responding, "I don't think that our Houses should dictate our friendships, if that's what you mean."

"Er... yeah," he whispered, knitting his eyebrows together until he figured out exactly what she was talking about. Hermione's vocabulary was definitely impressive, to say the least.

"I don't really think it makes a difference, only that every House is suited to slightly different personalities, and even then we can share bits and pieces." She clasped her hands together on top of her pile of books and cocked her head to the side in thought, "The Hat very nearly put me in Ravenclaw, you know, but it decided Gryffindor was a better option."

"Yeah," Harry ducked his head, looking away from Hermione's thoughtful gaze as he spoke, "I very nearly went into Slytherin."

"Why didn't you?"

Harry snapped his head back up, his green eyes glinting in the candlelight, "Because, I wanted to be brave." he mumbles weakly, he doesn't mention James, and how much he envied his little sand friend. Things like that were meant for six year olds.

Hermione nodded slowly, chewing her lip, "Then your friendship with Draco should be fine, shouldn't it? I mean, if the Hat considered putting you in Slytherin, wouldn't that mean you have more in common with them than you think?"

Well, that would make sense, wouldn't it. "Yeah, you're right."

"Of course I am," she giggled, "Though I don't particularly fancy making friends with the Ravenclaw students, they act rather stuck up most of the time."

Harry actually snorts at that, thinking of the rather snobby conversation Hermione had had with him and Ron on the train. Maybe she did have a little more in common with the Ravenclaws than just her intelligence.

He can't help but wonder how she knows so much about all of this sort of thing, or why she seems to be much nicer than what he remembers. Ron often took to complaining about Hermione, with Harry nodding mutely next to him. Maybe he should stick up for her. Be brave. It couldn't hurt, after all.

They don't talk much after that, Hermione goes back to her book mountain and Harry goes back to staring blankly at the dry Dragon book in front of him.

_"My name's Draco, it means Dragon in some other language."_

_"Wow, that's a really nice name."_

He flipped it open, reading through the contents page before flipping to the chapter he would be most likely to get through without falling asleep. The page was very very plain, the title written in bold and the writing below it written in neat, tight rows.

He was good at reading, probably because of all the hours he spent alone as a child, reading without a partner. Reading in his cupboard. Reading to Draco.

_"..."This chair is too big!" she exclaimed. So she sat in the second chair. "This chair is too big, too!" she whined. So she tried the last and smallest chair. "Ahhh, this chair is just right," she sighed. But just as she settled down into the chair to rest, it broke into pieces!" Harry looked up from the book in his lap, to find Draco in fits of laughter, arms clutched around his stomach and tears shining in his pretty silver eyes._

_Harry couldn't help but laugh, too. "What's wrong with you?" he giggled._

_Draco wiped his eyes, still laughing gently as he looked at Harry, "Goldilocks sounds a bit like Dudley, that's all" he said._

_Now that Harry thought about it, Goldilocks did sound very much like his cousin. Dudley hadn't broken a chair quite yet, but he did like to eat plenty of food. "You're right," he laughed._

Harry still has that book, it's stuffed in the bottom of his trunk somewhere. He'd never returned it to the library when he was a child, and chose instead to read it every few days in his cupboard so that he could laugh about Dudley. Draco had always been able to make him laugh_,_ but Draco was different now.

Wasn't he?

He certainly looked different. Sadder, perhaps.

Harry stared at the same line in the book for ten minutes, reading it over and over though never really absorbing any of it. Draco probably knew everything this book could tell him, anyway. Draco knew a lot about Dragon's after all.

* * *

><p>The air is cold outside the castle, and while the sun shines brightly above Harry, all of the other students seem to have retreated into the castle and away from the rather gusty wind. He doesn't really mind it, and the silence is a nice change from all the hubbub of the castle.<p>

He walked across the grass and toward the brilliant blue water of the lake at a reasonably sedate pace, letting the breeze rush through his messy hair and the sun kiss his face. It was a nice feeling, and it made Harry smile gently to himself. Draco would hate it out here.

He reached the lake a short time later, waves lapping at the shore gently, and the shade of a large beech tree blocking the sun_. _There's sand here, beautiful, dry white sand that shimmers gently as Harry looks at it. It's so enticing. So he dropped down to his knees, and smoothed his fingers through it as he had hundreds, perhaps thousands of times before.

His friends appeared without him even realising what he was doing, carved into the soft whiteness with smiles that were so shockingly familiar they made his heart ache. He hadn't seen them in so long.

James is there, and Lily. She looks beautiful, and seems to have forgotten her pride. James holds her little hand at his side and waves to him happily. Lily smiles too, and Harry wonders whether she'd wanted James to hold her hand all this time, but was too proud to say it.

Too proud...

Harry's eyes widen where he kneels, his hands tightening on his knees as he continues to watch the pair in front of him, James, the brave one who would do anything for Lily's attention, and Lily, the one too proud, and too stubborn to let her feelings get in the way.

Maybe Draco was a little like Lily. Maybe Harry really was just like James.

"Slytherin's can be friends with Gryffindor's," he whispered to himself, "You've just got to try."

He stood, glancing down at Lily and James in the sand, the friends he had always had waiting for him, before turning back to the castle and running towards the open front doors.

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><p><em>Now to go shut my sisters iPod up before I pull either my hair or her hair out.<em>

_REVIEW. I DARE YOU_ x


	13. Break

_I wrote this chapter to the sound of Katy Perry, because her music makes me want nothing more than to believe that maybe if we jump all the obstacles, we can have a love that lasts. If we're really lucky. I'm also listening to it because her music makes me angry/sad/happy all at once and it's a really great writing mood._

_In other news, according to my brother being a size ten is too big, so I'm going hungry for a bit until I can paint on my size 8 skinnies again and tell him and his judgements to go away (To say it politely). AND I'M A GINGER AGAIN! YAY!_

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><p><strong>Chapter 13 -Break<strong>

Harry sat on the steps leading to the owlery on a rather chilly but calm afternoon, Hedwig perched comfortably on his knee and a thick book opened in his lap. He liked it up here, especially when Hedwig was around to keep him company.

As much as he loved to have Ron around, he just didn't really feel up to talking to people at the moment. Hedwig was good at listening, and when Harry started mumbling under his breath she would turn her big amber eyes towards him and listen intently as he spoke. She didn't judge him.

He'd been sitting on the stairs for a few hours, staring blankly at his textbook and stroking absently at Hedwig's feathers while he mulled over what on Earth he was going to do about Draco.

He had already left the Slytherin boy alone for just over a week, in an attempt to try and settle Draco's rather edgy nerves, before even considering the idea of reforging a fragile friendship. He didn't try making eye contact in the corridors anymore, and kept his eyes staring pointedly at the desktop in the classes the two houses shared.

He didn't expect Draco to even notice the change, considering he was always avoiding Harry like the plague, but on the one occasion that he had looked up at the boy, Draco had been staring right back at him, a confused look on his face and his lips pulled into a frown.

They had stared at each other for a good thirty seconds, before Ron had nudged Harry rather pointedly in the ribs and asked him a question about something completely irrelevant.

Draco was sure to have had plenty of time to think everything over, and Harry was sure that it was time for him to start planning exactly how he was supposed to get back his best friend.

* * *

><p>Harry chewed on the edge of his thumbnail nervously, glancing from his untouched dinner plate to the Slytherin table every few seconds, just to make sure that Draco hadn't managed to do a runner.<p>

He was determined to do this tonight, to try and resolve all of these problems they seemed to have created while they had been apart, and maybe get some answers, if he was lucky. He couldn't afford Draco disappearing back to the Slytherin common room. He just couldn't.

But the boy was still there, his back turned to Harry and his hair pulled back in that way that makes him look so much less like a child than Harry ever remembers him. He sat with a foot or so of space on either side of him, the two boys that seemed to tail after him now sitting opposite him, their expressions a combination of confused and bored as they listened to Pansy Parkinson rant about one thing or another.

He wasn't really sure what he was going to say just yet, which was probably why he was feeling so nervous. He cursed himself internally for the hundredth time, for not giving it more thought in the time he had left Draco alone, even though it felt as though he had spent almost every waking minute of the past week and a half trying to figure out what on Earth he was supposed to do.

He needed some answers to things, first of all, like where Draco had disappeared to the day after his birthday, or how he had managed to completely disappear off the face of the earth for the years that followed. He wanted to know they couldn't be friends just because an old hat decided that Harry belonged in Gryffindor rather than Slytherin, because he was pretty sure that didn't change who he was on the inside.

The whole hall was abuzz with conversation, but Harry really couldn't manage to concentrate on anything happening around him, opting inside to twirl his fork absently through the cold pasta on his plate while his stomach tied itself into knots.

The only person who seemed to notice Harry acting strangely was Hermione, who had clicked her fingers in front of him a few times now, when he had obviously been staring across the room for just a bit too long, giving him a pointed look before returning to her equally unapetising pasta. Harry really didn't want to do this. But he had to, because he really, really needed Draco back.

He sat there for fifteen more minutes, twirling his fork and watching the back of Draco's head.

Pansy was the first to rise, tugging at Draco's shirtsleeve until he, too, stood up. Harry didn't know why the simple action of touching Draco made him feel so jealous of Pansy all of a sudden, but the hot coils that clawed up his throat at the sight were probably the only thing that compelled him to push himself out of his place at the Gryffindor table, and march quickly in the direction of the open door, ignoring the objections of a somewhat surprised Ron in favour of catching up to Draco before he lost him, or lost his nerve, whichever came first.

He stepped out into the chill of the Entrance Hall to see the flash of blonde hair disappearing down the staircase at it's opposite end, headed towards the dungeons, and obviously the Slytherin dormitory. He wasted no time, sprinting across the hall, his footsteps clattering loudly against the stone in his wake as he took to the stairs, taking them two at a time before yelling loudly down the apparently deserted corridor, "Draco!" he called, stopping on the bottom stop and listening carefully, "Draco!"

The sound of footsteps was all the answer he got, and he nearly managed a smile before Pansy rounded the corner, and it dropped straight from his face.

"Where's Draco?" he asked.

"He doesn't want to talk to you," she said bluntly, wrinkling her nose at him and flicking her hair.

"What do you mean?"

"I thought I was pretty clear, actually," she snapped, "Draco. Doesn't want to talk. To. You."

He stepped off of the staircase, knitting his eyebrows together in confusion. Why on Earth was Pansy telling him this? Draco had only been with her a moment ago, where was he?

Gritting his teeth together, he glared hard at Pansy, trying his best to seem even the slightest bit intimidating, before pushing his way past her and around the corner, "He doesn't want to talk to you, Potter!" she yelled at his back, but he was barely even listening, rounding another corner only to run head first straight into one of Draco's burly companions. He staggered back several paces, looking up at the two boys standing in front of him, eyes wide and mouth agape. He didn't remember them being quite that big.

He stared up at them for a second, before looking down at his eye level, peering around them nervously until his eyes met with the pretty silver he was so familiar with. Why was Draco hiding behind them?

"Draco, I need to ta-"

_WHAM_

Harry's back hit the ground with a dull thud, stars springing to his eyes and a horrible pain spreading from the bridge of his nose. The whole world seemed to turn on it's head, and Harry felt so strangely disoriented, temporarily blind and head spinning violently, that he didn't hear Draco yelling at the top of his voice in front of him.

His hands grappled at the stone floor, trying to balance himself as the white spots continued erupting across his vision, the taste of copper on his tongue and a hot stickiness running down his face and dripping from his chin.

He was vaguely aware of a set of hands on his shoulders, raising a hand clumsily in front of him in a feeble attempt to fend off another punch to the face, only to find himself clinging to soft fabric. "He punched me!" he mumbled dumbly, curling his fingers into the sweater as he spoke, shaking his head a few times in an attempt to clear the sparkling whiteness in his eyes.

"I know," came a calm voice in front of him, hands squeezing his shoulders before picking him up off the floor, wrapping an arm around Harry's waist and leading him off in a direction Harry wasn't really sure of. The stickiness was running down his neck now, and the violent throbbing in his nose made him wince visibly as he walked.

It felt like forever before his vision began to clear, and the feint sound of voices in the distance making him groan as he turned fuzzy eyes to look over at his saviour. Draco kept his eyes resolutely forward as they climbed yet another staricase, somewhere between the thrid and sixth floors, Harry thought, arm holding onto Harry maybe just a little bit tighter than necessary.

"What're you doing?" Harry asked quietly, wiping some of the blood from his face with his sleeve.

"I'm helping you," Draco stated simply, his voice quiet and resigned.

"Why?"

Draco glanced over at him, an oddly familiar flicker of light dancing in his irises, "Because... I care about you."

"Why?" Harry felt like a broken record.

"Because I do, okay?" Draco's voice raised in volume slightly, his grip loosening ever so slightly around Harry's middle. "Just - can we talk about it later? When you're not bleeding all over yourself, maybe?"

Harry sighed, wiping at his chin again and staring down at the floor in silence. His nose was really starting to hurt now.

They didn't say another word until the doors to the hospital wing were pushed open, Draco helping Harry onto one of the bed's near the door as Madam Pomfrey, a plump and rather sharp woman bustled over to them, clicking her tongue as she inspected Harry's face. Harry didn't pay much attention, concentrating instead on watching Draco pick at a loose thread on his sweater in the chair next to him. All he wanted to do was ask him some questions, to clear everything up so he wasn't so confused.

What did he get for his efforts? A broken nose and a ruined shirt.

Madam Pomfrey disappeared after several minutes of careful scrutiny, promising to return shortly and clean him up. He didn't really listen, waiting for her to get out of earshot before finally piping up. "I have to talk to you," he said.

"I know," Draco replied, looking up at him with shiny silver eyes. "What do you want to know?"

Harry can't actually believe how easy that was. The funny thing was, the only thing he really wanted to know right now was why Draco's friends had punched him in the face. He shook that thought off, however, in favour of more pressing matter.

"I want to know where you went." He whispered, "Why didn't you come back?"

Draco blinked at him, biting at his bottom lip for a moment before nodding slowly, "Okay. I'll tell you everything."

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><p><em>Next up, rewind.<br>_


	14. Daddy

_Sorry you guys, it really has been a stupidly long time since my last update, you can slap me on the wrist if you want to._ _I haven't been around all that much lately, with uni exams and getting all these qualifications so I can flick my job and get a better one, I just haven't been here, which is sad, because I've really been looking forward to writing this particular chapter. _

_This may seem a little chunky, but I promise there is more to add, more for Harry to dig up, break down et cetera.  
><em>

_Anyway, voila._

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><p><strong>Chapter 14 - Daddy<br>**

Draco hadn't really understood why his daddy was so fussy about all the little things that he did. Draco couldn't even manage to hold his teacup right without his daddy yelling at him for not being proper enough. Maybe it was just the fact that Draco was only six and his mummy said he was growing taller and that made him a little bit clumsy, or maybe it was that his daddy was always having people visiting from his work, he didn't know.

Some days when his daddy's friends came over to visit, Draco would just creep down to the kitchen with Dobby and watch him while he made lunch for the people upstairs and put a little ceramic plate of water crackers and jam in front of him without even needing to be asked. Dobby was a very good house elf, at least Draco thought so. Draco's daddy would always tell him not to talk to Dobby, because house elves were 'a lesser species,' whatever that was supposed to mean.

It never made him stop, because Dobby liked to talk to him and he liked to talk to Dobby. Dobby knew a lot of things that he didn't even know about things, he knew a lot about Hogwarts from conversations he had heard and books that he had snuck down into the dingey kitchen when Draco's daddy wasn't looking.

On the days that Draco wasn't hiding down in the kitchen with the elf, he would go outside into the gardens to help his mother with her roses. Most of the time he just watched her work, holding onto her tools for her and sitting cross legged in the grass. She would send him off to play after lunchtime, letting him venture out across the grounds aimlessly, promising to return home before it's dark.

Today, Draco has made it all the way to the wrought iron gates that lead out onto the unkown road that Draco only get's to see when his mother walks him through two or three neighbourhoods to the muggle park he loves to play on. She doesn't take him very often, maybe three or four times in a year. It's sad, because Draco really likes going to the park.

Maybe he'll walk to the park today, his mummy is all the way on the other side of the house, and she only said that he had to be back before dark, after all, his daddy and his work friends were over getting drunk in the study near Draco's bedroom, and he really didn't want to be anywhere near them when they eventually stumbled outside.

He's snuck out a few times before to go to the park, usually creeping back in through the gap in the hedge a little bit up the fence. His mummy has never found out that he's been gone, so this time won't hurt anybody, right?

He opens the high gates with a shuddering creak, slipping through the little gap in the bars before pushing them back into place, turning back to the open drive and smiling brightly to himself. He loved adventure more than anything else. He set off at a brisk pace, little feet crunching on the white gravel of the drive and his fingertips occasionally brushing over the hedges on either side of the drive.

When he reaches the end of the drive and steps out onto the skinny footpath than ran alongside the road, he smiles crookedly to himself, clicking his fingers at his sides and shaking his fringe out of his eyes. His hair has always been a little bit longer than what his mother would like it to be, and a whole lot messier than what his father would like, but he likes it just the way it is, because it makes him feel like Draco, and he likes that feeling.

It takes him about twenty minutes to find his way to the park, tottering across an empty road cautiously and stepping onto the soft green grass that is both familiar and foreign under his feet. He stops then, on the edge of the grass, and looks out over the park to the small playground on the other side. It looks as though it's empty at first, but when he looks a little harder, he can just make out a mop of black hair that's even messier than his sitting in the sand.

* * *

><p>Draco's never had a friend before.<p>

Sometimes when his daddy's friends come over to visit they'll bring their children along, but Draco doesn't like them very much. They're all very snotty, and most of them end up breaking his favourite toys and making fun of the collection of books he likes to read on his bookshelf. He doesn't like them at all.

But now, Draco does have a friend. A very very good friend who hangs on Draco's every word and can make his drawings in the sand dance happily like Draco has never seen before. Harry is like nobody else in the whole world.

Draco sneaks out through the front gates almost every day now, walking to the park and waiting for Harry to finish school in the sand pit. Draco thinks Harry's school doesn't sound very pleasant, but at least one day they'll both go to Hogwarts and that will be way better.

* * *

><p>"Do you really think that you can get away with this nonsense, Draco?" Lucius Malfoy stoof tall over his son, his face stoney and neutral, the only indication of the anger rolling off of him coming from the shaking in his hands and the characteristic twitch in his upper lip. "What on Earth would possess you to do something so <em>stupid?<em>" He hissed danerously.

Draco stared at the floor, his hair hanging over his eyes in the way he knew drove his father insane. His hands gripped tight to his knees, feeling the sharp edges of his kneecaps through his trousers. He only arrrived home barely fifteen minutes ago to find his father waiting for him on the front steps, dragging him into the house by the collar with out a word and dumping him onto the hardest chair in the drawing room.

He'd had a bad feeling that his father had been suspicious of him for a few months now, could always feel his eyes on the back of his head when he was sitting in the garden, sketchpad in hand and a serene smile on his face that was so unfamiliar to the senior Malfoy that the possibility of Draco being up to no good was almost certain.

Today was Harry's birthday, he had just left the boy in the park with the gift he had dragged his mother to Diagon Alley to buy just for him, claiming that he had broken quite a few of his quills in the last few months and he wanted a few nice ones so that he could get better at his drawing. He really did want to be better at drawing, maybe as good as Harry one day, but that wasn't the point.

"Do you have nothing to say for yourself?" His father's voice cut through his thoughts, making him start slightly at the harsh tone and dig his fingernails deeper into his knees. He continued staring down at the floor as his father laughed above him, harsh and unforgiving, "Perhaps I should be glad you're not speaking, considering all of the rubbish you seem to have been feeding your mother and I for _years._ Fraternising with such filth, what is wrong with you, boy?"

"Because you have such a great perception of filth," Draco retorted bitterly.

A hand clenched tightly into his hair, yanking his face up to look right into his fathers face, so close that he can smell the firewhiskey on his breath, and see the crows feet forming around his eyes. "Don't you dare sit there and tell me that you know better than me, Draco." he spat, "Malfoys do not associate with _muggle boys_ in _muggle parks._ You are better than this."

"He's not a muggle!" Draco cried, his fathers hand tightening painfully in his hair, "He's not! He's just like me!"

"He. Is. Nothing. Like. You!" Lucius yelled, punctuating each word with a forceful tug at Draco's hair. "Your blood is pure, Draco, and that is what is important. Some child you met in a muggle park is not a pure blood, because pure bloods are not seen in such places, Draco! Why must you try so hard to tarnish everything I work so hard for?"

Draco's jaw dropped open at his fathers words, his eyes growing wide as he stared up at him. How could he say that Draco was tarnishing anything? Why was his blood so much more important than Harry's? Harry was the most amazing person Draco had ever met, every day that Draco came home from the park, he would walk up to his room, pull his sketchpad out from under his bed and draw out a not so perfect picture of what they had talked about that day. He had a collection of sketchpads now, hiding in a box on his bookshelf, filled with pictures of dragons and Harry's stupid cousin and Draco's mother's roses.

"Never have I been so embarrassed by my own family." His father continued, "You will not leave this house again, without your mother or myself to accompany you," he said sharply, hand still tight in Draco's hair.

"You can't stop me from seeing my friend!" Draco said brokenly, tears starting to burn at the back of his eyes.

His father actually laughed at that, letting go of Draco's hair and pushing him back in his seat, "Oh, can't I?" he said wickedly. With that, he raised himself back to his full height, drew his wand from the inside pocket of his robes and walked straight out of the study, leaving Draco sitting wide eyed and terrified in his seat.

* * *

><p>The wards had been up for almost two years now, drawing closer to the day Draco knew to be Harry's birthday, the day burned into his mind like a tattoo. He hadn't seen the other boy since that day in the drawing room, his father spending hours in the garden, wand working wordlessly in the air, sparkling shields working their way across the empty sky until Draco was locked away for good, unable to escape without a wand, trapped within the confines of his tastefully decorated house, forced to stare longingly through the gates for days and days.<p>

He had cried for months, had not spoken a word to his father for almost a year, pushed his mother away and watched out of his window as she tended the roses alone.

He would sit at the dinner table of an evening and listen to his father preach the reasons why one persons blood was better than anothers, arms folded in his lap and his food often left untouched. His mother would take him off to her sun room on a Saturday and seat him in one of the leather lounges, open a dusty photo album on the coffee table and talk for hours about their ancestors, about the great Malfoy line and how he should be very proud.

She wanted him to be a Slytherin, his father wanted him to be a Slytherin. Draco just wanted Harry back.

It was at the train station that Draco's father planted the last seed in his head, kneeling down in his expensive robes as Draco picked at a thread on his jumper, his hair pulled back away from his face, just as his father liked it. He barely heard his father's whispered words in all the noise around him, but the bits that he did pick up made his cheeks flare with a mixture of shock and just the slightest bit of happiness.

"I'm so proud of you, Draco," his father whispered into his ear, "You will make a great addition to Slytherin house, I assure you. And remember, stand by your house, and they will stand by you," he began fussing with Draco's collar, "Don't stray, Draco."

And then he was gone, leaving behind a boy with a broken heart and the dimmest spark of light in his eyes, because nobody had been proud of Draco since he had left Harry alone in that park.

He would make his father proud. He would not stray.

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><p><em>Dear, proud Draco, you must know that your father doesn't value you, only the blood in your veins and the promise of a pure heir to flaunt. Oh how sorely he will be disappointed dear child.<em>

_**Reviews are golden**, feel free to rage at how long this took me, I give you permission. Love you all x_


	15. Stray

_I suck, I know._

_Have a long long LONG overdue chapter that may or may not be terrible, I'll tell you when I'm a little bit more coherent.  
><em>

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><p><strong>Chapter 15 - Stray<strong>

The following morning brought with it a chill the blew through every corridor of the castle. Harry drew his cloak in closer to himself as he made the commute down to breakfast, Ron moaning at his side about his unfinished Potions essay, completely oblivious to the fact that Harry's mind was clearly elsewhere.

Draco had finished his explanation somewhat abruptly the night before, standing suddenly from his perch next to Harry and fleeing from the Hospital Wing just as Madam Pomfrey had bustled back into earshot. Harry was sure he had been crying, though he was still struggling to recall the details of Draco's tale, let alone the look on the other boy's face as he had told it.

Harry wasn't even sure when he would get to speak to Draco again, if at all. Perhaps Draco would consider his explanation enough, the be all and end all of their friendship, and some kind of closure to a case that Harry really didn't seem capable of leaving alone.

It was weird, though. Something just didn't seem to sit right in Harry's stomach as he thought of Draco's words, his detached description of his father and the feeble tone he had taken towards the very end.

_"'Stand by your house, Draco' he told me, 'Don't stray, Draco.' It's like he knew I was going to come find you, and that maybe I wouldn't want-"_

Want what?

He'd bolted before Harry had even had the chance to ask, sputtering out a rough apology before disappearing through the double doors, leaving Harry behind, caked in blood and completely confused. What wouldn't Draco want?

His feet felt heavy as he descended the marble staircase, Ron tugging at his own hair and clearly distraught, though for what reason Harry didn't know any more, eyes wide as he slouched his way down the stairs. All around him, sleepy students dawdled in through the doors to the Great Hall, the smell of bacon wafting out and making Harry's mouth water.

His stomach rumbled eagerly as he entered the Hall, averting his eyes from the Slytherin table and heading instead for the mountains of food awaiting him at the Gryffindor table. It wasn't that he didn't want to see Draco, more that he didn't want to see the smug looks on every other Slytherin's face, basking in the glow of having one of their students punch the famous Harry Potter in the face, and walk away alive and well.

He wouldn't doubt that the word had spread through the other houses, seeing as Pansy Parkinson was the biggest loud mouth in just about all of Hogwarts. He ducks his head and walks just the slightest bit faster, before finally falling into the seat next to an unfortunate looking Neville, studying a rather odd red orb.

"Hey, Harry," the boy greeted distractedly, rubbing a hand to his forehead and squinting hard at the little glass ball.

"Morning." He immediately occupied himself with picking up several rashers of bacon and dumping them onto his plate, poking at the meat half-heartedly with his fork. Food was still a bit of a sore spot for Harry, even though he had been in this place more than long enough to settle into the 'eat what you want' routine, it still felt strange to take such large servings for only himself. Where was Dudley to swipe it away from him?

Crabbe and Goyle are a little like Dudley, he supposed, especially since one of them had managed to break Harry's nose last night. They're about as stupid as Dudley, too, if their blank expressions are anything to go by.

He propped his chin in his hand, looking away from the food being shifted around on his plate and over to the two boys, who sure enough, were fully engrossed by the food in front of them and little else. His eyes lingered there for a moment, before finally settling on Draco.

An uncharacteristically dishevelled Draco.

He looked as though he hadn't slept a wink, dark circles bruised beneath those pretty eyes and his hair sticking up at strange angles, hand cupped around one pale cheek as the other pushed around his food in much the same way as Harry. Then, just like that, his eyes have flicked up from the table, to stare straight across the Hall at Harry, who really can't look much better.

The hold the eye contact for far longer than necessary, Draco's brow furrowing significantly and his lips falling into a frown as they stare and stare, not daring to look away for a second, until Harry is nudged sharply in the ribs. He hissed in protest, turning to glare at Ron who ignored the look completely, waving a hunk of bacon in front of his face happily.

"This stuff is excellent," he gushed, "I could eat only this for the rest of my life."

"I wouldn't put it past you," Harry snorted in reply, glancing back at the Slytherin table, only to find Draco speaking to the boy next to him. His stomach gave another significant rumble at that moment, beckoning the food on his plate longingly, and finally drawing Harry's attention back to the task at hand.

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><p>Lessons go terribly that day.<p>

Between Harry messing up his potion and Hermione glaring daggers at him across the room in almost every other class, he would give almost anything to just curl up in his bed by the time dinner rolls around.

Hermione would have none of that, of course.

"You have a charms essay due first thing in the morning, Harry, and I'll bet you haven't even started it."

"I'll just do it at breakfast-"

"Oh, no you won't Harry Potter-"

"Okay! Okay, I'm going to the Library, then. Don't give me that look."

He had skipped dinner to do just that, finding himself a desk toward the back of the library and yawning widely, before flipping open his Charms book with a groan. He barely made it through the introduction, though, before the soft clearing of a throat disturbed him.

His head snapped up immediately, quill slipping from his fingers as Draco stood in front of him, his own Charms book tucked beneath his arm and his bottom lip worried between his teeth.

"Hi," Harry whispered, wary of a lurking Madam Pince.

"Hi,' Draco whispered back, gesturing toward the empty chair in front of him, "Can I sit?"

Harry blinked at him, eyebrows knitted together, "Of...Of course you can."

As Draco settled himself, Harry looked back to his barely started essay, scratching at his nose and huffing in frustration. He was _not_ going to finish this any time soon.

"Sorry for leaving so suddenly last night," Draco whispered out of nowhere, Harry looking back up to where the other boy had settled, head bowed as though he was ashamed of himself.

"It's okay," Harry settled his hands awkwardly on the desk, chewing on his own lip in some feeble attempt to keep his mouth shut.

It couldn't be more plain to Harry that Draco really didn't want to talk about whatever it was he'd almost let slip last night. What other reason would he have for bolting like that? Maybe he thought Harry wouldn't like what he was going to say?

"No, it isn't,' Draco sighed heavily, picking at the spine of his textbook, "It was rude, and I should've just finished what I was saying instead of being stupid."

"You weren't-"

"I just didn't want Madam Pomfrey to hear me, that's all," his cheeks flushed a delicate shade of pink, "It's not exactly something I should be saying."

"What do you mean?" Harry felt his brow crease, tilting his head to the side as Draco stared determinedly down at his book.

"When my dad..." he paused, took a deep breath, and finally looked up at Harry, "When my dad told me not to- to stray. I think that he thought... that I might not want to be a Slytherin any more." His eyes, pretty and shining as ever, looked so pained in that moment it felt like someone was ripping Harry little heart right out of his chest.

"Is that really so bad?" Harry asked carefully.

"Yes." Draco breathed, pressing one long, pale finger to his temple, "Can you imagine what he'd do to me if I ended up being a Malfoy in Gryffindor? He'd skin me alive." His eyes grew wide, the prospect of actually being skinned obviously presenting itself in his mind.

"But you're not in Gryffindor? You're in Slytherin, so you're fine."

"It wanted to put me there."

"What?"

"The hat," he swallowed thickly, tears shimmering in his eyes now and his finger digging hard into the side of his head, "It told me, that I should be in Gryffindor, and that that was where my heart truly lies." he shook his head, smiling weakly as the tears threatened to break their banks, "But I begged it, Harry, I begged it to put me in Slytherin."

"And it did..." Harry looked back down at his book, frowning slightly as Draco continued.

"Even that stupid hat was trying to tell me that I was being stupid. You were the only good thing I ever had... and I begged that stupid hat to take me away from you."

"Draco-"

All of a sudden, Draco rose from his chair, knocking it over in his haste and practically threw himself across the table, grabbing Harry around the neck and flooding Harry's body with a warmth he thought he would never feel again.

His arms rise of their own accord, and soon enough, at the back of the library, the Gryffindor and the Slytherin are hugging each other so tightly it hurt.

They say one cannot know the beauty of a sunrise, if you haven't first endured the dark.

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><p><em>This isn't the end, I promise. I will return far sooner this time because I hate being a horrible person.<em>


End file.
